Yami
by ainokitsune
Summary: Nobody knows who they are," the Kaiser said. "Especially not the ones who think they do."
1. Yami no karada

_____________________________________________

You say you want to stay by my side

Darling your head's not right

--The Strokes

(Yami ~1)

Yami no Karada

He could see the light above him, flashing across the surface of the water as it moved. He was trying to lie still, but it was difficult to quiet his natural tendency to shift his arms, legs, and hands, though he knew that even the smallest motion robbed his body of precious oxygen.

He could already feel the weight on his chest, the sense of yawning blackness as his body gradually devoured the air in his lungs. He had done this before, countless times, had even timed himself and knew he had a few minutes left before his eyes started to flash colors and shadows at the edges of his vision. He didn't panic. He felt himself smile slightly, and shifted to a more comfortable position on the bottom of the bath. His hands came to rest loosely on his belly, and his fingers twitched, tracing strange patterns in the clear warm water.

He looked up again. His hair floated above him, long and unbound, soft and black. Like seaweed, growing towards the surface, towards the light. He had a tendency to twist his hair, and pull his hair, when people weren't around, and as it floated above him in a soft cloud he resisted the urge to reach up and grasp hold, play with it a little, just to see if it was real.

A ringing noise was starting in his ears. This was it, then. The ringing would turn into a clanging, and then a siren wail, a then into a noise at a pitch where it wasn't a noise, just a sensation, a beating of blood in his head, against his skull, a tearing in his chest, the small sharp claws of panic. Only he never did. 

His back arched a little. Colors. That's what he wanted. That's what he was waiting for. They weren't real, of course. They were like the noises. They came at the edge when he was barely aware, when he could barely see, they became reality itself, the cries of a brain denied oxygen. They weren't visual things, they were feelings, each one came with a soft wet pain, a headache like the popping of a bone out of its socket, until the pain ran together and became the cloud of distance, of drifting, and he couldn't feel or see and he couldn't tell which way was up and couldn't feel his arms or legs or belly or face and everything was blindness and painlessness and blackness becoming white.

His fists clenched at his side and he struggled not to struggle, not to kick his legs. His throat worked, muscles spasming seeking atmosphere that wasn't there. Pain spread through his chest like an ink cloud in water . Soundless noise blossomed in his head, he clenched his teeth, forced his mouth closed. _Breathe. The demand. Only he couldn't. _

His eyes flicked, slightly, stopped, fixed, straight ahead, staring. Light above blurred, ran at the edges, became splattered with darkness. Someone spilling paint. Greyness pooled at the edges, flickered with blackness, and a narrowing, the world growing smaller. 

Time. 

Almost. 

Orange flashed, red, purple, yellow, unhappy colors, colors of pain. He tried to inhale, felt his body jerk as his lungs struggled against the closure. He could taste tin in his mouth, not blood but fear, real terror. Softness. He wanted to reach up, clutch at his hair, twist it around his fingers and pull hard but he couldn't because he couldn't feel anything but the choking pain in his chest, he couldn't find his arms, couldn't move, nothing was real but the pain, and the silver beating of his heart that was pulsing beneath the growing void inside him, a light that grew, became smaller, with each beat spilled a little outwards, a liquid like quicksilver, a poison to spread through his veins and make him heavy, infect his lungs, slide into his eyes, which were wide open but couldn't see beyond the blur of smeared light and pulsing color, into his lips that tingled and grew numb and parted a little because he could taste water, suddenly, seeping through the spaces between his teeth. He ached to breath and he could feel his mouth opening, jaw like a gate leveraged open, unsenuous and desperate. His chest bucked.

_Get up._

Words.

He shot upright, plunging out of the water and gasping for air at the same time. Water spilled off him, his eyes were wide open and the light blinded him, reality surged back, the coldness of the air on his damp skin, the white walls. His lungs worked, sucking in air. He leaned against the edge of the bath, panting, and water spilled onto the tiled floor. He gulped and swallowed. He always forgot how good it felt just to breathe. His head came to rest on his arm and he pushed his hair back, sloppily, knowing it always made him look a little bit elvish, exposing his smooth forehead and perfect ears. 

The bursting, ringing, blue-black spots beat at him for a while, as he leaned with his eyes shut, shoulders and chest heaving. When the disorientation finally began to abate, he opened his eyes and stood. For a moment he was afraid he was going to fall, his legs felt weak and his head detached. Then it passed, he was fine, and he climbed out of the bath.

"Are you all done, Ken?" His mother called as he headed back to his room.

"Uh-huh. Just let me get dressed, and we'll go."

He opened the door to his room, and paused for a moment in the doorway. His lips thinned, slightly. Then he stepped inside, quietly shutting himself in.

The computer on the desk was on. He crossed and reached out, paused with one finger on the on/off button. The light reflected off his naked arm.

There were words on the screen.

_Get up._

**

_I heard your voice over the net._

Daisuke stared at his computer screen.

Someone rapped on his open door.

"Oi! Motomiya! You comin' or what?"

"Uh...yeah," he answered the boy in the doorway distractedly, turning his head slightly but keeping his gaze fixed on the screen. With one hand he reached out and grasped the mouse, flicked up to close the window.

"I ever tell you how much I want that machine?" The boy, Shindou, asked. Daisuke shook his head.

"Only about twice a day. Let's go." He stood, slapping his hands on the desk in a decisive manner.

"You getting any more of those weird messages, by the way?" Shindou asked as they headed for the Quad. Daisuke shook his head.

"No," he lied. "Must've been some kind of prank or something. He narrowed his eyes at the bi-color-haired boy. "Maybe it's been _you all along."_

Shindou laughed. "Oh come _on, I know as much about computers as, uh…."_

"Someone who doesn't know very much about computers?" Daisuke inserted tiredly.

"Yeah! Anyway, whoever did it has to be some kind of crazy stalker-fan type, and I'm really not looking to get into your pants.

Daisuke made a face. The thought of he and Shindou together that raced briefly across his brain was enough to make his stomach do flip-flops, in a breakfast-losing kind of way. Shindou was so much like him it was scary--people regularly commented that they could be brothers. Daisuke couldn't imagine _ever being drunk enough to, er, check out Shindou's assets._

So to speak.

"Anyway," he said hastily, changing the subject, "How long is this thing supposed to last? I still have to get together the rest of the stuff for tomorrow's show. Kyouyama's letting me borrow all her _Ringo Urami stuff, and--"_

"_Ringo Urami? You're really going to play that?"_

"_And I need to put the finishing touches on that mix I said I'd do for Yagami's party tomorrow night."_

"You're a very busy man," Shindou agreed.

"I thought you were going to help. At least lend me your old Back Drop Bomb stuff."

"If I can find it. Hey, isn't that Miyako?" 

Daisuke looked. They'd reached the center of campus faster than he'd realized, and he stopped when he saw the tall girl heading towards them.

"Hey you bums. I thought you weren't showing up at all tonight."

"And miss this? Besides, I have my public to think of," Daisuke said, in the face of Miyako's predictable eye-rolling.

"Why do we always have to come out here and support Ishida's damned band, that's what I wanna know," the girl, who, in an attempt to go punk, had dyed her hair a viciously natural brown, groused as she fell into step beside her two shorter friends. Daisuke shrugged.

"It's an excuse to get out. Besides, they don't suck too bad. Sure, the rhythms are weak, the lyrics hackneyed and the lead singer looks like a refugee from Westli-"

"_Spare me, oh master critic of all modern music in Japan and the world over," Miyako interrupted, shooting Shindou a glare when the boy stuck his tongue out at her in his friend's defense. "Just because you have a net radio show--"_

"_Campus net radio show," Shindou corrected._

"Doesn't mean you need to bore the rest of us with your indie elitism, you crass boor."

"Well, I thought you'd appreciate a little sarcasm directed at someone prettier than you--" Daisuke began, then broke off with a yelp as Miyako attempted to attack him. He scrambled around Shindou, though the the other boy offered only minimal protection, , turning in place to see where Daisuke was as he ducked and dodged. Miyako shot a spate of acid curses in his direction, but they lacked any real malice, and after a few seconds of swiping she gave up, muttering imprecations against all short men. Daisuke snorted.

Yamato's band was already into its first set when they finally arrived. Students milled about in the purple twilight, and cigarette smoke wafted toward the heavens. Daisuke bummed a smoke off Koushirou and Miyako lectured him briefly on the evils of tobacco.

"A true veteran of American college chat rooms, our Miyako," Daisuke said, blowing smoke into the air.

"At least American college students _care," Miyako said irritably._

"What do they care about?" Koushirou asked, not raising his eyes from his computer screen.

"About...issues, and stuff. Important things. Things that affect their lives. Japanese kids...they don't even get involved."

"I guess." Daisuke shrugged.

"It's true!" Miyako gestured sharply as the strains of Yamato's guitar washed over them. Koushirou looked up briefly.

"He really has improved," the dark-eyed boy said. Miyako grunted.

"Gimme a smoke," she said.

"It seems like only yesterday he knew exactly two chords, and used them with skull-shattering finesse," Koushirou continued, as he lit Miyako's cigarette.

"I see chivalry isn't _compeletely dead," Miyako said with a smile, then gestured at Daisuke. "You know in America there are hardly any places you're allowed to smoke indoors anymore? Can you imagine a teachers' lounge that __doesn't make you choke water when you walk in?"_

Daisuke shrugged. Miyako sprawled on the grass and began counting stars.

"Listen, if this stuff was so bad for us, I'm sure the government wouldn't distribute it," Shindou said reasonably. Miyako grumbled a bit longer, but when no-one seemed to be interested in continuing the thread of the argument she fell silent. The evening deepened around them and they were joined later by Hikari, Taichi, and a handful of Miyako's friends, who fawned over Daisuke a bit until the boy, blushing in the heat of Miyako's lewd remarks, excused himself to the bathroom. 

Ducking inside the nearest building Daisuke found it dark and empty. The windows were open all down the hall and it smelled of autumn, smoke and burning. He shivered, drew his jacket closer around his body and began to walk, footsteps echoing loudly in his own ears. 

The stink of burning made the air thick, suffocating. Claustrophobic. He passed a window. Trees grew on the slope of the hill and their leaves rustled in a faint breeze blowing from somewhere, and he could hear Yamato's guitar wafting on the air, crawling over the foliage. Distance distorted the sound and swallowed up the older boy's voice, making it difficult to hear anything but the chords pitched so high they made the listener's skin crawl. The keening wail penetrated the walls and gradually killed all other sensation, and Daisuke found his footsteps slowing as he walked, slowing until he stopped walking altogether, and stood motionless by another window. His shadow fell on the moonlight that bathed the floor.

He drew a careful breath.

There was someone here.

He could feel it, in the cold. A presence, the sound of someone else breathing. The impossibly quiet noise of a heartbeat. Or perhaps not the sound at all, but the sense. Cold hands close by. Not touching, but close. Hovering. Fear, and wanting. Need without touch.

He swallowed.

_I miss you._

He turned. The hall was empty.

"Ken?" he said, then wondered why.

**

Noise _screamed across the table, rattled the glasses, shook the plates, even though they didn't move. His hand jerked sharply and smacked into his own glass, spilling water everywhere._

"Ken!" His mother shouted from somewhere.

He leapt to his feet.

"Sorry,I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" he fumbled for a napkin, could feel his hands shaking. The noise didn't stop, it died a bit then came back full force, pitched into a wail, a terrible screeching sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He clapped one hand over his ear and struggled to sop up as much water as he could with the other until the noise turned into pain and he dropped the napkin and leaned against the table with his eyes squeezed shut, panting.

"Ken."

His mother's presence was quiet, stabilizing. He opened his eyes and looked down. She was holding one arm and her eyes were full of concern.

"Are you alright?"

"I-I'm sorry," he said again, looking down at her hand grasping his arm. He could feel his palm pressing into the side of his head, not against his ear at all, but against his temple.

"Does your head hurt?"

"Mhm…no," he said after a moment, drawing his hand away. The noise was gone. He wondered suddenly if it had ever been there. He became aware of the sound of water dripping off the edge of the table onto the tiled floor. It was on his shoes and down his legs now. He shivered.

"I think you'd better go the bathroom and clean up. I'll take care of this," His mother continued, turning slightly as a waitress began to head their way. Ken nodded dumbly and moved past her, awkwardly, as though he'd forgotten how to operate his own body.

In the bathroom he paused, standing in the doorway. He could hear a sound again, not unlike the one from before, but quieter. Faint and almost musical. Almost pleasant even. It sounded a little like someone singing, quietly, a low male voice that he almost recognized.

"A love song," he heard himself say.

He walked into the room.

The mirrors were small and round and he leaned against the sink, stared into the glass at his own face. He barely recognized it anymore. His hair was still long, longer than before, in fact, and hung nearly to his shoulders. He would be twenty-one soon, and then it would be time to decide once and for all what he wanted to do with his life.

He knew he was hearing music now. It was quiet, not like before; he recognized the strains of a guitar and could almost make out the words. Had he heard this song before? Who was singing it anyway? It sounded familiar…he shut his eyes and stilled his breathing, straining to hear. What were the words to this song? He knew them, he'd heard them once, a long time ago.

_…miss you…_

"Miss you," he murmured.

_I'm coming for you._

He let his legs fold, lowered himself to sit on the floor, eyes still shut, touched his throat with his fingers. He felt warm inside.

_I miss you._

_I love you._

_I won't ever let you go._

He was half asleep when a sharp noise drove into his head. His eyes flew open. Someone was knocking at the door.

"Ken? Ken, are you okay?"

He stood, unsteadily, brushing his legs off.

"Yeah. I'll be right out."

The music was gone now. The silence hurt. He let his hair fall in his face and felt tears sting the corners of his eyes. Silence was ugly.

"Are you okay, Ken?" the woman asked again.

He breathed deeply.

"I'm fine, Mama," he said quietly. "I'm fine."

**

Daisuke walked into the room and turned on the lights. He'd stupidly left the window open and the room was frigid, colder inside than it was outside. He cursed under his breath and crossed to the window.

Paused and looked down.

"Oh hell," he breathed. 

He was leaning over the desk and the computer hummed quietly beneath him. The screen cast a faint blue glow on his arms and his jacket.

_I miss you, it said._

He stepped back, away from the window, away from the desk. He swallowed and ran his hands through his hair.

_I miss you._

Then the words flickered and vanished from the screen. Daisuke's hand shot out to the power button, but froze in place when his eyes locked on the screen, on the words that appeared in a new window, white text against a black background. His hand started to shake. He heard a noise in the doorway but did not look up, didn't look around, as Shindou came into the room and said his name from somewhere very far away. He couldn't move and he couldn't think, just stared at the words on the screen until his eyes began to burn, and then he blinked and stinging tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.

"Daisuke are you alright?" Shindou asked. But Daisuke couldn't answer. His eyes remained fixed on the screen even as he lowered his arm and stood away from the desk. His lips parted, mouthing the words that were there. Only he couldn't hear himself speak.

_I'm coming for you._

_________________________________________________________________


	2. Yami no kotoba

No sé quién eres.  Te amo.

_Whoever you are, I love you._

--Pablo Neruda (trans. Ben Belitt  )

________________________________________________

(Yami~2)

Yami no Kotoba

In the white moonlight the boy was pale and beautiful.  His chest rose and fell slightly with every inhalation and his face was calm in the repose of sleep.  To the room's other occupant his peace was enviable, and the still figure sitting at the end of the bed watched the boy for a long time in silence before descending to the floor.

Ken stirred and murmured in his sleep, as though aware that something had changed.

The figure standing in the grey darkness was tall, slim, and elegant, and like Ken his face was pale beneath a fall of steel-black hair.  Unlike Ken the moonlight did not fall on his face, but the light of the computer monitor did, and it was a blue-white electric light that gave his skin an ethereal, alien cast.

The figure stepped away from the bed, toward the screen, reached out, and without looking turned it off.  The light faded and the room became darker.  Shadows grew on the walls, reared up toward the ceiling and toward the sleeping boy.  The figure became blurry, less defined, and when it whispered the whole room whispered, all the darkness making sounds like dry branches rubbing together, like dead leaves falling to earth.  The figure faded but the shadows remained, and only when the darkness had deepened entirely around the sleeping boy did words take shape.  Ken did not wake, and the words faded into darkness without the boy ever being aware of their presence.  

_I want what belongs to me._

**

_The world is defined by language._

Miyako stared at the computer screen.

"I hate this Godamned class," she said to the empty room.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, twitched a little of their own accord, but despite her prowess with all things techinical the girl had never mastered the art of the college term paper.  Beyond those six words laid down in black text on her screen, she could think of nothing else to say.

"_Hate it!" She shouted, and stabbed viciously at her taskbar, summoning up the IM box.  Mimi was online.  Mimi would understand._

She typed :_Mimi?  Hello? carefully in English before turning her attention to her books, desperate to find some research she could 'paraphrase.'  When she heard the welcome __ding! of a response her hands flew to the keyboard._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says __hi_

She typed, _Hi Mimi.  Again, carefully, in English.  Miyako prided herself on her testing proficiency in the language, and had been severaly disappointed to learn that even a perfect score on the Entrance Exam did not make her able to actually __speak one word of the language.  Mimi was helping her as much as she was able, but Miyako had noticed that the girl's increased proficiency in the language made it far more difficult for her to empathize with a person still struggling with the subtle differences between 'a' and 'the.'_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says whats up_

Miyako sighed.  That particular term was one the girl had gotten into the habit of using in the last six months or so, and of which Miyako had yet to make the slightest sense.  She found that she could usually ignore it altogether and it it wouldn't affect the conversation in the slightest.

_I am working._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says you work?_

_I mean I am doing school work._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says oh_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says how is it?_

_It's hard!_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says why? arent you in all computer classes?_

_It is not computer class.  I don't know word for what class it is._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says is it like philosophy?_

_I don't know.  It's hard.  _

_~**Sexxypink**~ says what are you doing now?_

_I am writing in computer for term paper.  _

_~**Sexxypink**~ says i c_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says i guess it must be a philosophy class or something.  those are hard! :( i'm sorry_

_I'm also sorry. I want to stop this class._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says whats it about?_

_It's about language._

She stared at the screen.  It was impossible to described what kind of class she was taking in English; she had no idea what the words she should use would be. Instead she wrote:

_What are you doing now?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says staying up late. i should be studying.  i want to talk to my bf and mom and dad are asleep._

_Why are they asleep?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says b/c it's 4 in the morning! :p_

_Oh.  _

_Why are you awake?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says mom and dad get mad if i talk to my bf_

_Why?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ saysthey don't like it b/c im dating a black guy!! ^_^ but he is soooo hot!!!!!_

Miyako bit her lip.  Japan was still a nation where xenophobism was a strong cultural undercurrent.  She considered herself to be unusually worldly and tolerant, and was ashamed at the jolt of surprise that ran through her on reading Mimi's words.

Very carefully she typed, _I didn't know you had boyfriend._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says i love him!!  he is so sweet and romantic.^_^_^_^_^_^_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says we met at school.  _

Miyako couldn't help it.  She wrote: _He likes Japanese?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says he likes *me*_

_~**Sexxypink**~ saysthats all i care about_

_~**Sexxypink**~ saysbesides ive been here so long nobody cares im japanese. but i still like to cook japanese sometimes.  i want to make him sukiyaki. _

_Does he like sukiyaki?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ saysi don't know.  i hope so! maybe i will bring him to meet you sometime. :)_

_But your parents don't like him._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says who cares?  they cant control me!_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says it my life anyway!_

Miyako leaned back.  This didn't sound much like the Mimi she knew.  In fact it didn't sound much like anyone she knew.  

_~**Sexxypink**~ saysin america ppl do things they want to do.  i like that.  i can decide for me._

Miyako's eyes flicked back to the Word application open in the other window.  She chewed on her lip.  then she wrote, _You don't care about parent's feelings?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says my parents can go to hell._

Miyako's mouth dropped open.  She could not imagine a time in her life where she had ever felt or thought such a thing.  Yet in a way, seeing it in English there on the screen, it seemed distant somehow.  Although it was Mimi talking, it wasn't _really  Mimi, because the girl she knew would never say such things.  The Mimi she knew was cute, sweet, gentle...she tried to picture the girl on the other end of the conversation, sitting in her room in America looking like every other American girl, tall and pretty and perfect, and tougher than any Japanese girl could ever hope to be.  Not even afraid of her parent's opinion. What would that be like?_

After a while she looked at the screen and realized she had missed the girl's next three correspondences.

_~**Sexxypink**~ says miyako?  hello?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says are you there?_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says miyako? miyako?_

She yelped and hastily wrote, _I'm sorry!  But I have to go._

_~**Sexxypink**~ says oh.  ok.  well bye._

_Mimi, she typed carefully, terrified suddenly that the girl was already gone, __I hope to meet him soon. ^^_

_~**Sexxypink**~ says i hope so too.  bye!_

_Bye._

She closed the box.  Her eyes fell almost of their own accord to the pile of books by the desk.  One was lying open and her eyes traced the quote someone had underlined in red the last time it had been checked out.  She picked up the book, balanced it in her lap, and copied the words carefully.__

_Language creates perception, she typed. Then, __Perception creates reality. _

She leaned back and stared at the screen.

**

Daisuke shrugged into his jacket.

"I'm going to visit Ken," he said to Shindou.

The boy looked up from his bunk.  He was engrossed in some on-line game, or had been for several hours, but at Daisuke's words he sat up and closed the computer sharply.

"Why?"

"Because I was thinking about him.  And...it's been a while since we talked."

Shindou raised an eyebrow.

"Didn't he make it pretty clear last time he didn't want to talk to anyone?"

Daisuke shook his head.

"He's confused.  And anyway a responsible friend doesn't always do as he's told.  Sometimes you just have to do what's right."

He started to open the door and stopped at the snort of laughter that came from behind.

"You haven't spoken to him in months.  Now you're going to pull this self-righteous 'friendship' bull because you got a bug up your ass about seeing him?  Daisuke, please tell me you're not going to walk in there and say to him what you just said to me."

He leaned against the doorframe.

"I haven't been ignoring him..." he said, a bit lamely.

"Come off it.  You've been busy, everyone has.  And Ken said he didn't want to see or talk to anyone.  I think you're justified in doing what you did--you have to live your own life.  It's only fair, right?  But don't expect him to be the same person he was the last time you saw him."

Daisuke's eyes widened.

"Well, God, I _hope he's not.  Anyway I __have talked to his mother a few times, and she says he's doing much better."_

"I'll bet.  You know, the few things you've told me about this guy makes me think maybe you should just stay away from him altogether.  Sounds like he's pretty, hmm, odd."

"_Odd?"  It was Daisuke's turn to laugh.  "You don't know the half of it."_

He made it halfway out the door before Shindou stopped him a second time.

"Hey."

"_What?  I said I was going already!"_

"Do you still have all those pictures of him?"

"I--no," Daisuke lied, too taken aback to tell the truth.  "No, I...I got rid of them a while ago."

Shindou smiled but didn't say anything else.

**

He sat on the bed and stared at the white wall.  

The music was gone, and he missed it desperately.  He wanted it to come back.  It wasn't fair that the world should be so silent.  It made his head hurt, the emptiness.  The loneliness.  He could feel it behind his temple, above his ear, a sharp stabbing pain.  

He stared at the wall until his eyes started to burn and sting and he had to squeeze them shut.  Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes.   He shivered, felt the warmth squeeze onto his lashes, felt a droplet quiver on the edge of his lid and splash down and away.   When he opened his eyes again the world was blurry behind water and light sparkled.  Silver light flickered in front of his vision, in front of the white wall, and his mouth worked for a moment without the slightest sound.

"Stars...you gave me...stars...." He managed, reaching out.  Of course he knew they weren't really there, the shining lights on the wall, but they were so beautiful he couldn't help it. He closed his eyes again, imagining that they were real.  If he could touch them, if they would be real, then maybe everything would be alright again.

"It's so beautiful," he whispered.  He didn't turn his head to look at the computer, silent on the desk, or see the way a program opened itself, words scrolling across the screen in stark black and white.

_It's so beautiful._

"Give me stars.  Please.  Let me see."

And there were stars.

He felt them before he saw them.  Heart-breaking in their beauty, their distance and perfection.  They called him, he heard his name, felt them speak without voices, sing without music.  He felt their light shining on him.  When he opened his eyes it was the same, the same lights on his lashes, fading now, but he could _feel the presence of the stars, of the sky overhead, of blackness and shining light, and that was what really mattered.  Not what he could see but what he knew was real._

"Please..." he wrapped his arms tightly around himself, could feel the excitement in him, the joy.  The exultation in his heart.  He was so happy.  The world was so beautiful.

_The world is beautiful._

_Beautiful._

_The sky is shining for you.  I love you.  I love you._

He wiped his eyes and tilted his head back and as he moved the world swam, the whiteness blending into water, into ocean spray, into blackness.  Of course the wall was still white but he could see the blackness too, the pure frostiness like a winter's night, and one by one the stars came out.

_Look, isn't it perfect?_

He fell, backward onto the bed, felt the mattress and covers give beneath his weight.  His hair flew up and fell down around him and he stretched his arms up, letting his fingers play, tracing designs against the sky he could see over the white ceiling.  The sunlight was spilling in over the paint but that didn't matter, none of it did, all that mattered was what he could see, which was more beautiful than anything that was merely real.

_It won't be like this forever._

_Come back inside.  I want a picture of you._

He smiled and shut his eyes.  Dreams were what he needed.  The sky stayed in the darkness and he couldn't remember ever feeling so happy.  So empty and so happy.  

He wanted to float away into the darkness.

**

"Mrs. Ichijouji?"

The woman behind the door smiled.  She looked pretty much the same as Daisuke remembered her, a little older, perhaps, and more worn, and he didn't remember the significant grey streak that ran from the part in her hair all the way back to the bun being there before.  But other than that she was the same.

"Motomiya."  The woman smiled tiredly.  "I haven't seen you in a while."

He didn't know Ken's mother was rebuking him, in her own quiet way, but even if she wasn't he felt himself suddenly assailed by guilt.  He shuffled his feet.

"Yeah, I uh...school's kept me busy, I guess," he mumbled, trying to ignore the memory of Shindou's words that rose up suddenly in his head.  He bit the inside of his cheek.

"Is Ken home?" he asked, to forestall any questions about what exactly had kept him too busy to visit his former best friend.

"Yes...." the woman turned her head and peered back inside the apartment.  Daisuke craned but couldn't see around her; Ken's mother had grown adept at shielding her son from unwelcome gazes.  

"Let me just ask him.  Wait here, please."

"Um, sure..."  He fidgeted as the door clicked closed, leaving him alone in the hall.

On the other side of the door Mrs. Ichijouji turned to face her son.  Ken was sitting on the couch reading a magazine, apparently oblivious to the conversation taking place less than ten feet away.

"Ken, dear," she began, stepping toward him slightly.  "Ken."

He looked up.

"You have a visitor."

She saw his face go blank.

"Ken."

His eyes flicked to the door behind her, then back to her face.

"It's Daisuke."

He leapt to his feet and tossed the magazine onto the table.  It slid over the others and fell to the floor, but Ken didn't notice.  He walked out of the room.

Mrs. Ichijouji sighed, and turned back to open the door.

"I'm very sorry, Motomiya," she said with a sad smile. "I tried.  It's just," she shook her head, "It's not his fault."

"I know."  Daisuke shoved his hands in his pockets.  "I guess...I'll try coming back again, soon.  Will that be alright?"

"Yes of course.  But you shouldn't trouble yourself--"

"No," he interrupted the traditional Japanese niceties, "No, I want to."

He turned and started to walk away.

"Motomiya?"  The woman's voice forestalled him before he'd taken three steps.  He turned.

"Thank you," she said, before closing the door.

He stood facing the door for a while, but it didn't open again.

**

"Ken."

The young man looked up.  He was sitting on the floor in the corner with his knees drawn up and his arms over his head.  When he raised his eyes to his mother his hair fell across his face.

"Mama," he said.

She came and lowered herself onto the floor beside him, and put her arms around him.  He made a small sound.

"This isn't working, Ken," she said gently.

"I know."

"Maybe it's time you reconsidered...the other thing."

She felt him stiffen.

"You want to send me away?"

"No, Ken."

"I--I'm _trying, Mama.  I really am."_

"I know, sweetie.  I just think...maybe going to stay with your father might be good for you. Just for a little whi--"

"I don't want to go to England!  I don't want to go away!"  She felt him shudder.  It broke her heart.  She drew him in closer, let him put his head in her lap.

"Maybe some time away from Japan, that might be what you need."

"No, Mama," he whispered, "Please.  I'm...I'm trying."

She looked down, and smoothed his dark hair out of his face.  

"I know, Ken," she said quietly.  "I know."

__________________________________________________________


	3. Yami no koe

_We live once again in a world of runes and icons, efficacious_

_and full of virtue; a world in which the distinction between how we_

_know what we know, statement and referement, meaning and object_

_has begun to break down.  Indeed, quantum physics tells us that _

_we are all made out of numerical likelihoods called electrons, photons,_

_and so on; and the Big Bang theory says that we are all made _

_out of light._

--Frederick Turner

_________________________________________

(Yami~3)

Yami no Koe

_Language is the root of consciousness._

Miyako pushed away from the desk and spun in her chair.  She kicked her legs out and watched the room blur as she turned.  When she slowed she stuttered her feet against the floor and spun again, until her hair flew out around her.  She was waiting for the next idea to hit.

When it came she reached out and stopped short, nearly toppling the desk with the sudden exchange of energy.  She grinned.

_Because of language we perceive the world in a certain way.  Without that basic foundational system, we would be unable to perceive the world the way all others perceive it.  Our shared language allows us to share a culture, and, therefore, to share a perception of the world of which those outside our language do not partake._

It was easy, really. Once you had the basic idea the words just came flowing out.

She twisted a lock of her hair around one finger, and with the other hand wrote, _Language creates a breakable universe._

**

"Well he's your son too.  You might at least take some responsiblity."

Mrs. Ichijouji covered the receiver with her hand and sighed as her ex-husband bit out a nasty retort to her statement.  She couldn't even really feel angry at the man anymore. She knew that she was in the right, and so did he.  Mostly she just felt a great weariness.

"Then at least make an effort to talk to him. You can do that, can't you?" She asked, after the man fell silent.  Her gaze fell to Ken, sitting on the coffee table and watching her with wary eyes.  She knew that he knew.

"Ken," she said.

He raised his chin and his eyes hardened.

"Come here."

His face was paler than usual, but she attributed that to the chill in the air and not to any unseen psychological cause.  She hissed into the phone, "You _will speak to your son, and you will do it now."  In a more normal tone of voice she added, "Ken, come here."_

After what seemed an interminable period during which the boy did not move, Ken unfolded himself into a standing position and crossed the room.  His face was blank and expressionless, but his eyes seemed unusually shadowed.

"Talk to your father."

Mrs. Ichijouji held the receiver out encouragingly.

The young man accepted it in silence, eyes still fixed on his mother.  When his father began to speak his gaze shifted, fell away, to stare at nothing at all.

_Ken.  Genki jai?_

"I'm fine, Papa," he whispered into the phone.  He missed his mother's sharp look.  He couldn't hear himself speak.

He didn't know the words were in English.

_Tenki ga ii?_

"Yes.  It's fine."

_Okaasan wa genkisou da ne._

"She's fine."

_Aa sou.... The man trailed off into silence.  Ken stood immobile, waiting._

_Saa, ima Eikoku no yoru jya.  Dakara samui de aru, kono fuyu._

"It's not winter yet," he whispered.

_Kono tenki wa fuyu no tenki no you ni.  The man laughed.  Ken did not._

"It doesn't feel like winter here," he said.  His father fell silent.

_Ken, he said after nearly a full minute of dead silence had passed.__  Ken, gomen.  Honto ni gomennasai.  Moshi Toukyou ni modoru no koto ga dekereba...modoru.  Demo boku....boku wa...._

"It's alright, Papa," Ken murmured into the phone.  "It's okay."

_Ken, ima boku wa sugoku nemui.  Kimi, daijoubu?_

"I'm fine.  I'll be fine."

_Sore jyaa...oyasumi._

"Good night, Papa."

The phone clicked quietly, there was a brief pause, and then the dial tone began.  Ken stood in place, staring blankly at nothing, until his hand opened slightly, apparently of its own accord.  The receiver slipped from his hand and struck the floor, bounced once, and lay on the carpet.  He looked at it impassively.

Mrs. Ichijouji stared at her son.

**

_We perceive our environment through the window of language._

Miyako grinned.  When her IM box beeped at her she didn't even swear.  Until she looked at the username.

"Dammit, Daisuke, I'm trying to work here!"

_Miyako?  Turn on your visual. I can't see you._

"It's broken," she lied.  "What do you want?"

_I need a favor._

"Well sure, that's what I'm here for, after all.  I have nothing more important to do than satisfy your perpetual need for perverse and twisted favors.  That's what I am, the magical favor-fairy."

_Get bent, Miyako._

"Oh! Oh!  Now he insults me!"  She spun around and raised her arms, as though appealing to an unseen audience.  The white walls made no response.

"Listen," she said, spinning back to the mic, "I don't need this right now.  I have enough on my plate, you know?  I have a _life."_

_I seriously doubt that._

"Well, then, I have schoolwork.  Which _is important to me, though I'd imagine that's something you really aren't capable of comprehending."_

_Miyako, come on.  Please? I'll love you forever._

"You mean you won't love me if I don't do this for you?"

_This is a guarantor of my undying affection._

"Undying debt is more like it.  You know how many favors you owe me?"

_I'll make you a CD._

"Daisuke, although this may be news to you, the fact is that all debts _cannot in fact be repaid merely through the judicious application of music."_

_Even if it's really really good music?_

Miyako sighed.

"What's the favor?"

_I want you to get me into Ken's room._

**

He was staring out the window, his hands in his lap.  People, buildings, streets, signs, blurred by as they drove, and Ken's face registered none of it.  Mrs. Ichijouji was watching her son closely.  They had been driving for over twenty minutes now and her son had not spoken the entire time.  In fact, he hadn't spoken for hours now.

"Ken?" she ventured, when they reached an intersection and slowed to a halt.  Ken's eyes did not flicker in her direction.

"Ken," she tried again.  The boy had a listlessness about him that unnerved her.  His eyes were fully open, but empty, and his head was tilted to one side.  He seemed to be staring out the window and she fervently hoped that he was, in fact, doing just that.

"Look, Ken," she said, reaching out to him.  Her fingers brushed against his leg and he stirred, turned his head and raised his eyes to look at her.  Her gaze fell to his hands, still lying  in his lap; not clasped, or folded, simply lying with the palms facing each other, fingers curled in slightly.

"Look, Ken," the woman continued, over the alarm bells in her head.  She pointed.  "Birds."

Her son looked.

Beyond the two-way overpass that bridged the intersection were a series of power lines.  Black crows, large crows, were congregating there.  They and wheeled over the street like a black cloud, moving in tandem, flowing over the air..  Mrs. Ichijouji saw Ken's lips and eyes twitch.  A smile flickered across his face.  It vanished just as quickly, but she was happy that it had been there at all.

**

"You want to _what?"_

_Get into Ken's room.  What, are you going deaf?_

"Daisuke, you don't need me for that!  Just go over to his house!"

_Wow, Miyako, thank you for pointing that out for me, I never__ would have thought of that for myself.  You think I didn't try that already?_

"So, then, you went over and couldn't get in?"

_Pretty much.  I couldn't even catch a glimpse of him._

"Why so interested in seeing him now, after all this time?  The way things ended I wouldn't think--"

_I just feel like...I don't know.  I can't leave things the way they are.  It was all screwed up.  I wanna make amends, I guess.  So, I don't know, I can get on with things._

"Don't you think you're being a _tad selfish?"_

_Probably._

"Hmm."  The girl leaned forward and rested her chin in her palm.  "So this getting into Ken's room business, I'm guessing it involves more than the mundane actions which the human body naturally engages in."

_Ummm...yes?_

"I mean you want to do something with the Digital World."

_Oh.  Yes._

"Why don't you do it yourself?"

_Tried already. It's no good. He's got defenses around his gate like you wouldn't believe._

"You can't hack it yourself?"

_I'm flattered.  Of course not._

"Then get Koushirou."

_Too upstanding._

"Excuse me?  Are we talking about the _same  Koushirou here?  The guy who did eight months for, heh, 'redistributing'  Egawa wetware to his little buddies in Taipei?  I still don't know how the hell he got back in school--"_

_This is different.  This is personal stuff.  I already asked him._

"Figures.  I'm always the second choice."

_C'mon, when I was talking to him I was thinking of you._

In spite of herself she smiled.

_**_

"Where are we going, Mama?"

The question was so sudden she nearly turned the car of the road in surprise.   Her eyes flickered to her son, then away, saw the way he was looking at her, the mild curiosity on his face.

"Just to see someone, dear."

"Not another doctor, Mama."

She sighed.  It had been a long time since they'd been to the hospital.  She hated the thought of taking her boy back there.

"No, Ken.  Not another doctor."

"The same one, then."

"I'm sorry, sweetie.  If there was anything else--" 

He turned away, back to the window.  She could see his reflection, though, saw his brow furrow.  Looked down and saw his pale fingers twitch, just slightly.

"Please, I don't want to," Ken said after a moment.

"I know.  Neither do I--"

"You don't know.  Please."

"Ken, there isn't any other way!"

"Mama, please," he shut his eyes.  "I don't want to.  I'll be good.  Please."

"Hush, now, it'll be alright," she said with desperate calm.  She turned down a residential street, beneath the shadows of the state-planted sakura trees, bare now.  "I promise it'll be alright."

"They won't keep me there."

"Of course not," Mrs. Ichijouji said quietly.

Ken looked down.

"Of course not," he whispered.

_**_

_The creation of an artificial reality through the means of language allows us to manipulate that reality._

Miyako flicked her fingers over the keyboard.

"I'm in the middle of writing a paper," she said, and pursed her lips at herself.  Even she wasn't convinced.

_What's it about?_

She sighed audibly this time, and rolled her eyes, an effect that was entirely lost on Daisuke due to the absence of a visual connection.

"It's about language, and reality."

_Huh?_

"I didn't expect you to understand."

_Read me a little._

"Hell no."

_C'mon, please?  I just want to see what an intelligently written line of bs sounds like._

"Fine.  Ahem," she sat up straighter, as though presenting to an audience.  "Ummm...the perception of reality as something that can be shaped is further enhanced by the existence of the Internet."

_Wow.  I have no idea what you just said._

"Look, if I'm going to do this for you I'm going to need access to a better machine.  Faster hardware, better software.  You get where I'm going with this?"

_Yeah.  I'll see you in five minutes._

"Right.  'Bye, Daisuke."

She turned the computer off.

___________________________________________

_A/N: I apologize for my bad Japanese.  Here are the translations.  If anybody cares to correct my grammar, please do, preferably in an e-mail.  I welcome the chance to make corrections._

_Ken.  Genki jai? Ken.  Are you well?_

_Tenki ga ii? Is the weather good?_

_Okaasan wa genkisou ne. Your mother seems well._

_Aa sou....  Oh, really...._

_Saa, ima Eikoku no yoru jya.  Dakara samui de aru, kono fuyu. It's night here.  This is a cold winter._

_Kono tenki wa fuyu no tenki no you ni.  This weather is like winter._

_Ken, gomen.  Honto ni gomennasai.  Moshi Toukyou ni modoru dekereba...modoru.  Demo boku....boku wa....Ken, I'm sorry.  If I could come back to Tokyo...I'll come back.  But, I...I...___

_Ken, ima boku wa sugoku nemui.  Kimi, daijoubu?  Ken, I'm very sleepy.  Will you be alright?_

_Sore jyaa...oyasumi.  Okay then...good night._


	4. Yami no amasa

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

--Allen Ginsberg

________________________________

(Yami~4)

Yami no Amasa__

_You're so beautiful._

Ken whimpered and turned his head away from the window, burying his face against his mother's arm.  The lights were too bright; they hurt his eyes.  The whiteness was burning against his retinas and behind his skull, the artificial electric glare from a thousand eyes blazed off the white walls, the naked window frames, off the skirts and shoes and sweaters of the nurses as they hurried across the dull tiled floor.  The world was loud and bright and ugly and unbearably painful to behold.

He dug his fingers into Mama's shirt.  He was afraid he might be hurting her, he could feel the bones in her arm where his fingers pressed, but he couldn't seem to pull away.  He wanted someone to sing to him, sing a lullaby the way Mama used to do, and stroke his hair and say that everything was going to be alright.  He wanted to cover his ears but was afraid to let go, and because of that he could hear the sounds of voices, of all the people around him, whispering and murmuring words just on the edge of understanding.  Were they talking about him?  

They were talking about him.

He'd been trying to think of ways to make it stop, to make the words stop.  To make the noise go away.  Whenever he went outside there was noise, but even when he stayed inside he could hear someone talking.  Sometimes the words were loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes a scream that drowned out all other sound.  He never turned the computer on anymore but it didn't seem to matter; the words came through the screen anyway, flashing in the darkness, words that were not really words at all  but things that were part of the air and the walls.  Textures he would be able to feel if he only reached out to touch.  And now the words had followed him here.

You're so beautiful.

He shivered.

"Ken, honey?"

He pulled away.

"God, shut up," he moaned, pressing his hands to his ears.  Only the words were in English and no-one could understand.  He could hear his voice, why was he speaking English?

"Ken, daijoubu?"

"Stop it stop it stop it leave me alone _please leave me alone...." He slid to the floor and covered his head with his arms, rocking back and forth.  He could hear it._

_You're perfect, Ken, you're beautiful.  Can't I get a picture of you?  You'll always be perfect._

_I love you._

"Love you," he whispered.

"Ken,"  Arms wrapped around him, pulled him upright.  He felt himself being moved, he stumbled forward blindly into darkness.__

_Do you love me?_

_Of course not._

"Kiite no, Ken-chan?  Mou, me o sagashite."

"Mama..." he reached out, felt his hands pressed, felt himself drawn into an embrace.  He kept his eyes squeezed shut in fear of what he would see. When someone started to sing it took him quite a while to realize that it wasn't his mother's voice at all.

_beautiful stars_

"Mm," he turned his head away from the warmth so he could hear more clearly.

_of love_

_shining from heaven above_

_bidding the world to look_

_that way_

It was so beautiful.

_beautiful stars_

_of a wondrous love_

"Ken?  Can you hear me?"

He pulled away and opened his eyes.

_i'm singing stars_

"I hear..." he breathed.

_radiance is the glow_

_over the earth below_

They were alone in an alove, away from the eyes of the patients and nurses.  He looked at the wall, at the shadows that crawled there, at the whiteness behind the shadows.

_filling the earth_

"I'm scared, Mama," he whispered.  "I don't know what to do...."

"I know, honey.  That's why we're here.  The doctor will know--"

Beyond the voice was a noise, a silver sound, a keening like water spilled on thread.  Like quicksilver on a surface, mercury running over cloth, splitting and breaking and joining together, moving like a live thing.

Breaking apart.

_filling_

_earth_

_light_

_stars_

_stars stars_

He could hear a guitar played at the edge of hearing, ragged chords tortured into a single note,  a note as hard as steel.  Grey and red, metal and blood.  An opened and wounded mouth.

_singing_

_beautiful filling the earth_

_light scattering _

_night _

_of  the night_

"Doctors don't know anything," he hissed suddenly, sharply, pulling away altogether and dropping his hands into his lap.  He stared at them, pale appendages twitching like spiders, things with a will of their own.  Ugly.   He raised his eyes.

"I don't want to see the doctor," he said.

"You have to."

His hands twitched but he allowed the woman to pull him to his fete and guide him back to the waiting area.

"I don't want to see the doctor."

"You have to.  Things aren't right with you--"

"What, just because I dropped the phone?  Is that such a problem?"  He looked away, anywhere but at her.  He couldn't focus; he was looking around at the other people, at all the people, their shining hair and the colors of their clothes.  

She put her hand on his arm.

"I know you're scared--"

"I'm not scared!" He jerked his arm away.  "Good God."  He flung himself into a chair and scowled up at the woman.  "I'll wait.  Alright?  We'll see the Goddamned doctor and then we'll leave.  Any problem with that?"  He ignored the noise of the other people, he could hear them talking. _What's wrong with that boy?  He's weak, you know he's weak._

His mouth hardened.

"I'm not weak," he growled.

The woman stared at him.

"All right, Ken," she said after several moments of silence had passed.  Ken tried not to turn his head in the direction of the people, tried to keep his gaze focused on the woman.  Tried.  "We'll go then.  After you see the doctor, we'll leave.  

He raised his chin and met her eyes.

"Good."

**

She stared at her son.  

His hands were twitching.  Or not twitching, really, but moving, constantly, he was tapping the thumb of one hand rapidly against the back of the other.  He was lookind around, his head twitched from side to side, his eyes seemed to be seeking something they couldn't find.  Sometimes he reached up to swipe at a strand of hair fallen across his face, and then she would see that his hand was shaking.  He would press it against his cheek, touching his face, move it in a way that made her think he wasn't even aware that he was touching it.

_"It's getting worse again," she'd said to the doctor.  __"I'm afraid something's going to happen and this time no-one will be around.  I'm afraid to leave him at home alone.  When I go to work I'm terrified for him."_

He'd dropped his hands now, to his legs, and was rubbing his knees anxiously and gazing around in a vague sort of way.  She saw his lips move, once, barely, but he made no sound.

_"I can't protect him forever.  Something has to be done."_

"Ken," she tried, as she always did, because she could only reach out to him, she could never say anything but his name.  His head jerked in her direction and briefly his eyes were wide and terrified.  He was staring past her and the light reflected off his irises.

"I'm not weak!" He said hoarsely.

_"Mrs. Ichijouji, it may be time to consider more some more drastic measures for your son."_

"Ken!"  She grabbed his chin and squeezed, until he inhaled sharply and his eyes focused suddenly on her. 

"I'm not," he whispered, trembling.  "I'm not."

_"You're not __drugging him."_

_"I'd like to see him again, and order up some new tests.  Can you come today?"_

With a smile cry he pulled out of her grasp and turned away, his hair falling across his face.

"Ichijouji?"  

The nurse was standing in the doorway with a clipboard in her hand.

"The doctor will see you now."

**

"So this is it?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

Miyako raised an eyebrow at the screen.

"Wow," was all she said.

"Can you get me in?"

She stared at her black polished nails, then drummed them on the desk.  She said, "Yeah, maybe.  In time.  If I can put together something to decrypt that thing, I might be able to break through.  It could take days, though.  Don't forget who we're dealing with here."  She sighed heavily.  "Damn, I wish I had Koushirou here to help."

"I believe in you, Miyako."

She looked up at Daisuke, who gave her an encouraging smile.  In spite of herself she felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Such a sweet talker, you," she said, letting the smile spread fully across her face.  "You realize if I _don't get this thing you could be blipped out of existence during transition, or worse?"_

"What's worse?"

She stuck her tongue out.  

"Nasty effects.  You could get third-degree burns on the _insides of your body.  Your skin could be ripped clean off your body.  You...could go insane.  The things Ken's computer can do to your brain..." she shook her head.  "I don't want to send you unless I know you have a hundred percent chance of surviving intact."_

The young man had gone increasingly pale beneath his naturally dark complexion as Miyako continued to speak.  Now he bit his lip and shot her sidelong glances.  Finally, in a voice that barely trembled, he said, "Well, I have faith in you."

Miyako smiled.

"Daisuke, can I ask you one thing before we get started?"  She said, turning back to the computer screen, facing the ominous layer of encrypted code that stared back at her from the window of the Digital World.  She didn't look at Daisuke when he said, "Well yeah, sure."

She asked, "Did you love him?"

There was silence for a while, though not very long, and when Daisuke spoke his voice was calm, and simple, and strong.

"Of course I did," he said.

**

The car seemed cold.

Ken had his eyes closed, and his lips were parted slightly.  Mrs. Ichijouji didn't try to talk to her son this time, just drove the car in silence and tried not to look at him.  Occasionally she saw his lips move and once she heard what sounded like words, but they were words that meant nothing to her, in a language she did nt recognize. Perhaps it was English.

_"I've __already lost one son, then a husband.  Ken is the only family I have left.  He was fine for a while, but now...I'm afraid I'm going to lose him too."_

Dr. Yasuhara was a gentle man, and one of few doctors the woman felt she could truly trust.  He made no attempt to assuage her fears with false hopes, and because of that Mrs. Ichijouji was feeling a sensation that was all too familiar to her: the cold bite of fear.

_"I realize your concern, Ma'am, but sometimes there are no other options--"_

_"You are not drugging my son!"_

_"Mrs. Ichijouji, I do appreciate your concerns. But you must consider what is best for Ken.  He is not living a full life, or even a healthy life.  He is ill__, Mrs. Ichijouji, and your desire to protect him is only causing him harm.  Now I will also say that medication is not really a viable option at this point, but should be something that you come to terms with and are willing to consider, should the need arise."_

They came to an intersection, and stopped.  Mrs. Ichijouji clenched her hands around the steering wheel and shut her eyes.  A headache was starting up behind her eyes and she prayed that it would not turn into a full-blown migraine.  She couldn't afford to be bed-ridden for days, not now.  She offered a quiet prayer to Kwannon and took a deep breath.

She heard movement and opened her eyes.

Ken was sitting forward with his eyes wide, staring through the windshield.  She looked at him, then followed his gaze, saw the birds on the wires.  

"Ken...."

"Mama," he whispered, "Look.  Mama, look,"  he stretched out a hand toward the glass.  "Birds," he breathed.

_"We should consider the possibility of a tumor."_

_"Tumor?  Are you saying Ken has cancer__?"_

_"Of course not.  But we should rule out a possible physical cause before we move on to psychiatric options."_

_"What happens if we don't find anything physical?"_

_"Then I'd like you to consider the possibility of institutionalization--"_

_"Absolutely not."_

"Birds," he said again, and he smiled.  Tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks, silver tracks in the sunlight.

_"Absolutely not."_

_"--at least for a brief time, for observation."_

"Ken," she reached out, but suddenly he wasn't there anymore.

"Ken!"  She screamed as he slipped through the open door.

She scrambled.  The light was about to change, all the cars were stopped, all four points were still, like armies held in check, waiting in the brilliant sunlight.  Silence filled the air.  The light was going to change.  No-one was moving.

Ken walked into the intersection.

"Ken, no!" She ran.  She knew everyone could see them --_let them stop, sweet Kwannon let them stay!-- and she could see a few faces behind glass, see the look of stunned surprise. _

There were cars coming, she could hear the sounds of movement.  The light changed, they wouldn't stop.  She ran, in her sensible slip-on shoes, to her son who was staring at the birds as they all launched themselves into the air and surged upward, and she saw him tilt his head back and his hair caught the light and the wind and she could see a car coming, plowing forward.

_already lost one son_

She hit him bodily, pushing him, then grabbed his arm and dragged him to the sidewalk, even as she heard car doors slam and footsteps come running.  Ken was alright.  He was okay.  But people had seen, and now there would be questions.  And her car was sitting in the lane with the door hanging open and the engine running. She could feel herself shaking all over.

"Birds, Mama."

She fell to her knees, clutching him.  She knew he didn't even know she was there.  She was shaking and Ken was on his knees too, because he didn't know where he was or what was happening, and had let himself be pulled down when she fell.  She held him and squeezed her eyes shut and started to sob.

_"You won't be able to protect him forever."_

_______________________________________________________________


	5. Yami no naka

do you still feed the animal

your muffled voice

air up the side of your face

and the wires come in

open us close us

slide beneath the city

and the feet in the streets above us

your voice again

(your voice again)

(and your voice again)

i don't want you to call again

--Underworld (File Under: Thestarsintheheavensandthemooninthegutter)

______________________________________

(Yami~4)

Yami no naka 

He stood in the doorway and peered into the room.

"Mama?"  He said.

He could see her form on the bed, see her pale face, and the equally pale smile that she gave him.  His own smile was small and hesitant, and faded almost as quickly as it took form.

"I'm alright, Ken," His mother said softly, as though speaking too loudly might shatter the darkness around her.  "I'm fine.  I just need to rest a little."

He stared into the darkness for a while, but when no further response was forthcoming he went away, into another part of the apartment.  Mama had given him things to do, little pieces of paper to fold.  There was paper all over the floor, folded into shapes.  All over the floor, from the kitchen to the living room down the hall into his own room.  He'd made hundreds of little folded shapes and walked with them a little ways, scattering them all over.  Around himself like flowers, colored in pale shades.  Blues and pinks and reds and greens.  They weren't flowers, though.  Not really.  The origami said they were something else.  There were rules.  Maybe they looked like flowers to him but everyone else knew they were something special.  They were supposed to be birds.  That's what everyone said.

But they weren't really birds at all.

He reached down and picked on up, grasped what imagination said were the head and tail, and pulled.  The foldings came apart, twisted and pulled and became lines in the paper again, shadows and light, bare bits of passion and belief.  The bird became a piece of paper, but it didn't really matter.  It had never been a bird at all.

"Ken?"

He looked up.

"Ken, what are you doing?"

He held the paper out and let it fall.  It fluttered and drifted and he picked up another one and pulled it apart the same way.  His mother's slippers had come to rest in the midst of the sharp colored forest.  She was staring at him and she had some sort of expression on her face.  He knew that he should recognize the expression.  Happiness?  Anger?  Love?  He couldn't tell.  It didn't mean anything.

"What are you doing to the cranes?"

He looked down at the floor and shrugged.

"They're just pieces of paper," he said.

**

Daisuke cautiously opened one eye, then, when his body failed to come apart in a million bloody pieces and fly away into the darkness, he opened the other one.  There was a faint shimmer in the air, the effect of his proximity to the impassable gate of Ken's computer, but so far that was all.

_Daisuke, how you doing?_

He glanced up into the sky, a pointless gesture but one he couldn't help, hearing Miyako's disembodied voice speaking to him out of the ether.  He pulled his Digivice out of his pocket and shook it a little.

"Can't you be a gentleman and pretend to communicate like a normal person?" he said to the tiny projection of the girl's face in the screen.   The artificial brunette grinned.

_Sorry.  I just love playing with new toys.  THIS IS THE VOICE OF GOD, COMING TO YOU LIVE FROM—_

"All right, knock it off, would you?  Or somebody's going to get suspicious and come along to investigate.  How close are you to getting me in?"

_"Pretty close," the Digivice chirped.  Daisuke jumped—Miyako's voice through the little toy-like apparatus seemed reedy and thin compared to the one she'd been using mere moments before.  __"Is this better?"_

"Uh, yeah, thanks," he said, glancing around.  "I can see, um, I think I can see the monitor from here, so that must be the way in.  There's what looks like an electric fence, though, and some barbed wire—I don't see any of the major bad stuff that was here last time."

_"I had to dismantle a lot of the semi-sentient guardians before I sent you in, or you'd be dead by now. Don't touch the fence, though, or you'll smell burning flesh up close and personal."_

"Swell," he muttered under his breath.  "Is there anything I can do from this end?"

_"Not really. Everything's remote-access anyway.  Just sit tight and I'll have everything taken care of.  I hope."_

"What I don't understand is why Ken would go to the trouble of putting up all these protective measure when he could just disable the gate and be done with it.  I mean, wouldn't that be easier?"

_"I don't think it's really an option.  As long as Ken exists somewhere in the real world, the Digital World has access to his presence.  If he's near a computer, theoretically at least that system has the potential to become a gate."_

"So if he was somewhere else he'd need a whole new set of defenses for the new system?"

_"Not sure.  I can't tell if these are system-specific, or if they're actually linked to Ken's signature itself."_

"That doesn't seem like it should be possible."

_"There are a lot of things about the World we still don't understand.  And, as the human capacity for manipulating information increases, the World evolves and changes.  It isn't even the same Digital World we knew when we were children."  _

"That's…kind of scary."

_"It makes sense, though.  Hey, I think I've found something!"_

"You can get me through?"

_"Actually, yes, there seems to be a major hole in the defenses here, though it's hardly something most people would think to look for."_

"Well?"

_"It seems most of these defenses here are keyed specifically to your__ presence, Daisuke.  Anyone else could walk through pretty much unscathed."_

"_What?  You mean Ken is specifically trying to keep __just me away?"_

_"Looks that way, yeah."_

"Well, don't think that isn't an interesting bit of information, Miyako, but I hardly see how it could be used to help me."

_"You don't see?"_

"No, I don't."

_"Are you sure?"  Miyako's voice was teasing._

"Yes, Miyako, some of us are not nearly so wise or witty as yourself, I'm afraid," Daisuke said irritably, glaring at the pixilated image on the screen.

_"Well now, that's a surprise.  Weren't you the one who was begging to hear me tell that line of well-written bs from my essay a few days ago?"_

"Huh?  The one about language?"

_"That's the one."_

"Well, what's that got to do with," he waved a hand at the fences and glittering electrical field in the air just beyond, "this?"

_"Ah, grasshopper, watch and learn."_

_Grasshopper? Daisuke mouthed to the open air, but didn't have much more time to think about that statement as he felt a sudden, unexpected sensation in his own body._

"Um, Miyako?  Hey, you, Voice of God sitting in my dorm room!  What the hell's going on?" he shouted, with increasing horror.

_I am not the Voice of God, came Miyako's voice, vibrating out of the sky with enough force to bend the trees to the ground and make the earth shake.  __I AM God._

**

He stood in the center of the room with his eyes closed and his head tilted to the side. He could feel his hair slipping down the side of hs neck, until I was bare and exposed in the darkness, smooth and white and pale.  He felt cold on the surface of his skin.

He knew that he was being watched.

_There's someone here, the darkness whispered.  Ken trembled, in his heart and belly, but he didn't move, didn't flee. He was waiting.  _

_I want....Something whispered._

Ken sighed, softly.

_I want what belongs to me._

"You're so beautiful," he said quietly.  "I love you so much."

_I miss you._

"Daisuke."

_I'm coming for you._

"Let me take your picture.  Come inside and let me get a picture of you."

_I love_

_You.___

He pressed his hands to his eyes and folded up, collapsing onto the floor and rocking slightly.

"I don't love you.  I can't love you.  I won't, not after, not after…."

_I love you._

"What happened, Ken?  Why won't you see Daisuke?  Why?"

Cold fingers on his skin. He shivered but didn't pull away.

_Someone's trying to get in._

He opened his eyes.

**

"Miyako?  What the hell did you do to me?"

Daisuke stared down at his body.  He _felt the same, certainly.  He reached up hesitantly to touch his face._

"Mirror," he muttered, "I need a mirror."

_"Do you like it?"  Miyako's voice, coming to him once again from the confines of the tiny Digivice, sounded far too self-satisfied for Daisuke's comfort._

"What did you _do?" he tried not to wail, as he fumbled on his person for something even remotely reflective.  Where was a piece of aluminum foil when you really needed it?_

_"Language defines culture.  Culture defines reality.  Ergo, language defines reality.  Even you__ can understand something as simple as that."_

"_Really not interested in a lecture on my intellectual shortcomings at this point, Miyako," Daisuke muttered.  He'd given up the search for something reflective and shiny and was now sitting on the grass staring despondently at his hands.  His very pale hands._

_"Language is data.  In a very fundamental sense, language is merely a way of communicating ideas.  It has a life of its own, in terms of the fact that the presence or absence of a word equals the presence or absence of a concept  Take the English word "I" for example, that sense of identity that Japanese simply lacks, and that 'watashi' can't match for basic conceptual power—"_

"Miyako!"

_"I've turned you into Takeru."_

"You—what?  You—you evil _bitch, you, I'm going to—"_

_"Relax__, my spastic friend.  I've made a copy of Takeru's DNA and replaced the data stream that was__ your DNA with his.  That's all.  As soon as you re-emerge into our world, the effect will be gone.  But it will have the effect of fooling Ken's defenses.  They'll think you're Takeru.  Here, in this world, for all intents and purposes you are__ Takeru."_

"I don't feel like Takeru."

_"Well, that's Nurture for you.  We can't blame our genes for everything."_

"I can't believe you would pull something like this on me."  He stood up and stared down at his body.  Then, with growing horror, he raised a hand to his head.  Slowly.  Terrified.  And his fingers closed on the one thing he'd hoped never to find there.

"The _hat?__  Miyako, the hat is __not genetic, there is no Goddamn way!"  He tore the offending article of clothing off his—Takeru's—head and hurled it onto the turf.  There was a long pause from Miyako, and then she said, __"Ken used to have a book of poems in his room.  You remember?"_

"Yeah," Daisuke said shortly.

_"There was one he always liked a lot.  I never knew what it was because it was in Spanish, bt I got an English translation a few months back.  So I could try to understand."_

"What was it?

_"Etres plumas que asustan, entre noches—"_

"Um, don't speak Spanish, remember?"

_"Between terrified feathers, between nights_

_and__ magnolias and telegrams,_

_between__ southerly winds and winds from the sea blowing West,_

_                you come flying."_

"What's it about?"

_"…You come flying, alone, in your solitude,_

_alone__ with the dead, alone in eternity,_

_shadowless__, nameless, you come flying_

_without__ sweets, or a mouth, or a thicket of roses,_

_                you come flying."_

"What does it mean?  Why are you telling me?"

_"Vienes volando, Daisuke-kun.__  You come flying.  What is that in Japanese?"_

"Ummm…Tonde kimasu."

_"But it isn't the same, is it?"_

He stared down at the hat and shook his head.

"No.  No, it isn't."

_"Just because you know what the words mean, doesn't mean you really understand."_

He shook his head.  

"I don't understand."

_"They're just words, Daisuke.  It's the meaning that gets lost."_

**

"Vienes volando, solo, solitario, solo entre muertos, para siempre solo, vienes volando in sombra y sin nombre, sin azúcar, sin boca, sin rosales, vienes volando."

_Who is bringing?  Who brings this?_

He raised a hand, palm flat, stared at the shimmering light in the air.

_Something's coming.  Or someone._

"Not allowed," he whispered.  His hand made a fist.

"Alone, in your solitude, alone with the dead, alone in eternity, nameless, you come flying." He remembered the words.  But words weren't important.  

"You come flying."

_Go._

He scrambled to his feet, he ran.  Down the hall to his room, banged the door open, laid hands on the computer and tore the cords apart, tore them out and split them and toppled the monitor on the floor where it burst apart.  But it didn't matter.  He could feel it now.  The light. The coming light.

_He's coming.  I want him.  I want what belongs to me._

"No," he breathed, "No you can't, can't have him.  Not like that.  It won't ever be like that.  Not after…not after—" he turned away because he could feel it coming.  In spite of the destruction he could hear the darkness shifting around him, and the light that was coming.

"How?" he whispered.

He turned.

Someone was standing there.

"Takeru?" he breathed.

__________________________________________


	6. Yami no sora

What's it like out there?

Do you worry anymore?

--The Music

________________________________________________________

(Yami ~5)

Yami no Sora

(There was a special kind of sky.

That was it, wasn't it?  A special sky, something made just for him.  A wide-open space, a tremendous vastness that could not be refuted.  A bitter poison, a trap and a lie.  A beautiful thing that killed.  Like the sky, or a memory of the sky.

That was it, wasn't it?

_yes_

Then what was _he _doing here?

What was he…?

_I love you_

no…

_ken__._

A special kind of sky.)

**

He stood still amid the wreckage, frail and beautiful.  Lights burst and faded around him as the death throes of the machine cast pale strange shadows over Ken's face and body.  He was very pale, his skin nearly translucent, his eyes large, wide, distant.  They flicked over Daisuke briefly, the pupils shone in a burst of  sudden brilliance as the computer spat wasted sparks into the air, then their color was obscured.  Darkness.  A full kind of darkness.  A kind of pregnant black.

Ken stepped back.

"No," The dark boy said, softly, into the air.  "No, it isn't."

Daisuke shivered.  His skin was cold.  He was cold inside, in his belly, a cold stone had settled in his gut.

"What?" he breathed.

"It isn't you," Ken's voice was quiet but matter-of-fact.  The words should have made sense.  Daisuke strained to understand.  

 "It isn't you.  It isn't him.  It isn't right and it's not fair."

No.  It didn't make any sense at all.

"Ken?"

He was looking past Daisuke, over his shoulder, into the distance.  

"Ken—"

"You have to go away," Ken said suddenly, meeting his gaze, eyes locking onto his with sudden sharpness.  "You have to leave, Takeru.  It isn't safe for you here.  The sky…" he looked away, "The sky," he said again, sadly.

Daisuke stared at him.  

"Ken, it's _me," he said desperately.  "Ken?  Don't you know me?"_

He felt a cold breath.

_I know you._

Ken inhaled sharply.  "No," he breathed.  Daisuke's brow furrowed.  He stepped forward.

 "Ken?"

"You can't!" He pressed his hands to his ears, shook his head wildly.  His hair flew, blackness flaring outward.  He tried to step back and his foot caught against a cable.  He stumbled.

Daisuke reached out.  He caught his arm, his wrist, and Ken's eyes flew wide.  His lips parted.

_I want what belongs to me._

They stood like that for a moment, poised perfectly in space and time, Daisuke holding Ken's captive arm.  Ken stared at him without moving, his mouth slightly open, not speaking, eyes wide.

"Ken, do you know me?" Daisuke tried, after a while.

Ken's mouth worked soundlessly.  His eyes flickered over Daisuke's face, as though seeking something.  Then his lids slid down, half-closed, and Daisuke could see the faint glitter of color, his glance moving away. 

"Let go," he said in a low voice.

Daisuke released him.

Ken stood up. He jerked his head, flipped his hair, didn't look Daisuke directly in the eye.  He seemed to be listening. He twitched a pale hand in the air, then, without warning, turned and walked away.  He ignored the wreckage of the destroyed computer on the floor and instead crossed to the window and opened the dark curtains.  A brilliant light filled the room, washed the walls and drowned all the shadows.  Daisuke remained where he was.

"I wanted to see you…" Daisuke began, but trailed off and fell silent.  There was nothing to say after all.

He should never have come.

"But Ken I wanted to see you," he whispered.  "I'm so sorry…about everything.  About what happened…it's my fault isn't it?  I did it…somehow.  Isn't there anything I can do? Can't I make it right for you?"

Ken turned.

"The sky," he said softly, "Takeru the sky.  You need to leave."

Daisuke swallowed.

_don't__ go.  I__ love you._

Daisuke shivered.

"It's cold," he said softly.  Ken regarded him dispassionately.  Daisuke saw him shut his eyes.  He didn't open them again.

"I'll go," Daisuke said finally.  He turned around, reached for the doorknob, and at that moment Ken's voice forestalled him.

"Takeru."

He stopped.

"Takeru."

Daisuke turned around.  Ken had his eyes open.  His lips parted.  The walls…whispered.

_i_  love___ you.  i miss you.  love me.  love me._

"Kiss me," Ken said.

Daisuke drew a breath.  The walls…no, the shadows were gone. But somehow they were still there, beneath the light, hiding.  And they whispered.  They were calling his name.

"Ken…"  he stepped forward.  He walked around the damaged machine, came to stand before Ken.  The boy was taller than him but he cocked his head, looked at him in almost-curiosity, and his hair slipped across his face and a strand caught in the corner of his lips, and they parted slightly.  Daisuke could hear him breathe.  

He reached up, behind Ken's head, moved him closer.  He met his lips softly, and shut his eyes and a jolt went through his body.  Like red lightning, like the scarlet color of blood, it leapt from Ken's slightly-open mouth and surged through his body.  He jerked.  It was pain.  But no.  It was something more.

It hurt.  Daisuke moaned softly.  Ken was sweet, like fermented cherries.  Like berries left out to in the sun to rot.   Sweet, and sickly, oozing their juices in the summer heat.  He was warm and pliant, and Daisuke, in spite of himself, slid his tongue into his mouth to taste him more. He couldn't help it.  It was wrong.  He knew he was taking advantage but he couldn't help it.  Ken was sweet and bitter, rotten from the inside.  Intoxicating.  Daisuke…

He pulled away, slightly.  Their lips were nearly touching.  He felt Ken's mouth twitch in a half-smile.

"Vienes volando," he said softly, lips moving against Daisuke's.  

_You come flying_

"…Solo, solitario…"__

_ alone, in your solitude_

"…solo entre muertos, para siempre solo…"__

_alone__ with the dead, alone in eternity,_

"…vienes volando in sombra y sin nombre…"

_shadowless__, nameless, you come flying_

"…sin azúcar, sin boca, sin rosales…"__

_without__ sweets, or a mouth, or a thicket of roses,_

Daisuk's lips trembled.

"… vienes volando," Ken breathed.

_you__ come flying._

Daisuke pulled away.  He could feel his chest rising and falling.

"Oh God…Ken."

"Shhh," the other boy lifted a pale finger, held it lightly to Daisuke's lips.  "Takeru, don't tell Daisuke."

He smiled, and let his hand fall.

Daisuke began to shake.  He wrapped his arms around himself and stumbled out of the room, and the apartment.  He barely made it out the door before his legs gave out and he slid to the floor.  He squeezed his eyes shut, but he could feel hot tears burning there.

_don't__ tell daisuke_

Shadows.

They whispered his name.

**

(There.  Like that.

What was it?  What had he forgotten?

There was a taste.  He squinted into the sun, trying to remember.  

A brilliant light.  The light of the sun and the light of the sky. He remembered what it tasted like, it's bitterness like tea left far too long in the pot, until it was cold and black.  Yes.  The sky was like that, a poisonous color, behind the blue.  And eyes…eyes like that.  Poisonous brown.

Yes.

_"Do you love me?"_

_"Of course I do.  How can you ask that?"_

_"I love you more."_)

**

"Daisuke?"

Miyako was worried.  She stared at the computer screen.  She'd been trying to contact her former leader's Digivice for a while now,  with no success.  She couldn't track him and didn't know where he was.

"Daisuke!"  She tried again, louder this time, as though the audio level of her voice would be enough to pierce distance and, perhaps, realities, and somehow reach the boy.  It did not.  Her screen remained unresponsive, her speakers remained silent.

She slammed a fist against her thigh and cursed quietly.

**

He didn't even know where he was.  He'd got on the train near Ken's apartment and just started riding.  Now he was deep in a part of Tokyo he didn't recognize.  He wasn't listening to the stops and the truth was he didn't care.

_"Don't tell Daisuke."_

His hands clenched into fists where they were lying in his lap.

No. Don't tell Daisuke.

He remembered coming to see Ken, asking him, a long time ago.  Saying, _"Why?__  Why__, Ken?  Why do this to me?"  And Ken hadn't answered.  Nobody had.  Then Ken's mother had taken him to see the doctor, and he dropped out of school.  And they didn't see each other anymore._

He stood up suddenly. The train was empty, mostly; it was the middle of the day.  Everyone was at work or school. The sunlight spilled into the car, through the windows, onto the metal floor.  It glared off the metal poles and reflected from the plastic seat covers.  He started to walk, came to the end of the car, opened the door, stepped through.  Empty.  The car was empty.   Every seat…he stepped back, looked.  Both cars were empty.  There were no people.  Maybe there never had been.  He stepped back through and  looked out the window.  The city seemed far away.  He could see all the building, dusty and bright in the light, and they were close but they seemed also somehow distant.  Was that possible?  Or was it just him?

He ran to the end, into the next car  Doors slid open, slammed closed.  The train was so loud. He could sleep on a train at night but right now it was only noise, a huge noise, the beating crash of steel on steel.  Empty.  Empty, there were no people.  Maybe there never had been.  Not ever.

He ran to a window, leaned across the seat, put his hands down so he could peer outside.  There was a stop coming up. Only he hadn't heard a word…nobody had announced it, the upcoming stop.  But he could see it, he could see it, it was there.  Surely, surely….

No. They were going to fast. It would be impossible to stop in time.  He saw the overhang, the concrete platform, the white building.  And there was someone standing there, waiting.  But the train wasn't going to stop. They weren't going to stop—

He stared, eyes fixed on the form on the platform, and as they sped by he thought he saw…a familiar face.  Blonde hair, shining in the sunlight.  Blue eyes.  Eyes that lifted, suddenly, and looked directly at him.

Takeru.  Takeru.

And then he was gone.

Daisuke drew back from the window and sank down into the seat.  He rode the train for another hour until, without warning, he heard the name of a stop he recognized.  Swallowing hard he got to his feet and, without another glance back, exited the train. He inhaled as the heat of the day met him like a blow to the chest.  Tears stung his eyes and he stood on the platform alone, surrounded by the noise of the city, the sounds of millions of people,  and he tilted his head back and looked up into the sky, and he couldn't hear anything at all, except the rush of air through the clear and empty sky.

**

Without warning her computer beeped.  Miyako's came running from the other room and leaned on the table, stared at the screen. Daisuke was there, clear as day, she could see his icon in downtown Odaiba.

"Daisuke!"  She shouted into the mic.  "_Daisuke!"_

**

A desperate scream –did it come from the sky?  He heard it, and then it was gone, but like a slap to the face he jolted.  His hand plunged into his pocket and came out holding the Digivice.

"Mi—Miyako?"  he managed, voice shaking only slightly.

There was a long pause, and he tapped the device.  The screen was dark.  He tapped it again and it came suddenly to life, and Miyako's tear-stained face stared up at him.

_Daisuke!  My God—where the hell have you been?  I was so worried—I thought—I thought—_she broke off.  Daisuke stared.

"I'm—what happened? Are you okay?"

_I should be asking _you_ that!  Dammit Daisuke, I was so scared…_ she sniffled.  Daisuke bit his lip.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.  "I thought—I just was riding the train, is all.  What happened?"

_I couldn't find you,_ Miyako said in a subdued voice.  _It was like you just disappeared off the face of the earth._

"No I—I was just…riding the train," he said in a small voice.

There was a pause. Daisuke was afraid to say anything more.

_Well,_ Miyako said after a while, _Well I—I think you'd better get back to campus._

Daisuke nodded. 

"Yeah…I'll do that."  He fell silent, then turned around to look at the iron tracks leading off into the distance.  It was getting late, the sun would be starting to set soon.  He needed to get back.

"I'll wait for the next train," he said,

**

The crush of people was almost unbearable.  He'd forgotten how bad it was.  It was so long since he'd been in Tokyo it seemed he'd managed to remember only the good things, while entirely forgetting the more pressing everyday realities of horrible overcrowding and dismal underground stations.  He needed to breathe the fresh air again.  He was suffocating.  He wondered vaguely in the back of his mind if he'd become claustrophobic without realizing it.  In the countryside it was impossible to think in those terms, but here, now….

He had to get out.  He plunged out of the train, into the crowd, and began elbowing his way forward.  People didn't get out of his way but they didn't complain as he pressed forward with increasing desperation. They didn't care. Everyone had somewhere to be, and the fact was that he did too.  He needed to be anywhere but here, now, breathing the stench of humanity, the mingled odors of cologne and perfume and shoe polish and sweat, and fear.  He gripped his bag tighter and pushed forward, felt his hand squeezing far too tight, and knew that his knuckles were turning white.  It didn't matter.  It was too much.  It was cold and dark and full of people, like a cattle-car.  Just like that—

Suddenly, without warning, he was standing alone, the swirl of people rushing away to fill the train cars, like water running downhill, into the open spaces.  He turned toward the nearest set of stairs and sprinted upward, two and three at a time. Closer, closer, he could see the sky, feel the fresh air.  His heart hammered in his chest.  Close, he was almost there.  And then, he was there.  He was breathing hard.  It was all too much.  Far too much.

Takeru leaned against the concrete wall and let his bag fall to the ground and squeezed his shirt in his fist and tried hard to breathe again.


	7. Yami no toki

Who would you disintegrate for?

--Clinic

_____________________________________________________________

(Yami ~7)

Yami no Toki

**

_He was sitting on the floor when Daisuke came in, and the other boy paused where he was, standing in the doorway with one hand on the frame.  He said, "Ken."_

_"Mm?"__  Ken looked up from his lap, where he'd been making a pretense of studying. He was having difficult concentrating these days, though…._

_"Let's go outside."_

_Ken blinked._

_"Now?__  It's the middle of the night, Daisuke."_

_"I know.  But it's warm and you can see the stars.  Not like __Tokyo__."  He came into the room, reached down and took Ken's hand gently in his own._

_"Let's go outside," he said again.  "Come on."_

_Ken suffered himself to be pulled to his feet, and he followed the other boy.  He felt a little empty inside, though he didn't know why.  They came to stand outside.  He felt Daisuke release his hand, and the brown-haired boy walked a little away form him, down the steps toward the garden.  He stopped where he was, and turned._

_"Come outside, Ken."_

_Ken swallowed.  He could feel a faint whisper on the air, and didn't know what it was.  He stepped forward hesitantly and when his feet touched the grassy earth he stopped, holding his breath, waiting.  Waiting, his breath like a crystalline puff in the air, like frost turning colder with every breathless second that passed.  Waiting.  For the stars, all the stars in the sky._

_"Ken?"_

_He came down.  Both feet rested on the earth and he turned slightly, moved forward toward Daisuke.  The boy was standing in the starlight and the yellow light that spilled out of the _ryokan_, and his face had a sort of transfixed beauty about it._

_Ken stopped walking._

_"Are you alright, Daisuke?" Ken  asked.  The boy stopped staring and looked away; there was a brief flutter of eyelashes against his cheeks._

_"God, Ken" Daisuke said distantly, "You're so beautiful."_

_Ken moved to where Daisuke was standing.  He took the other boy's head in both his hands, long pale fingers twisting through the dark strands, and Daisuke lifted his mouth and met him. His eyes, brown like burnt sugar, fluttered closed.  Ken let his own eyes slide shut until all he could feel was the presence of the other boy.  Like burnt sugar, yes, sweet but also slightly bitter, with an aftertaste—_

_He pulled away._

_"Ken?"_

_Ken exhaled a shaky breath, and without opening his eyes he lowered himself to sit on the ground.  He could hear the noises of night creatures, the summer insects buzzing and humming in the darkness.  _

_He opened his eyes._

_"Look at the stars, Ken," Daisuke said.  His head was tilted back and Ken could see his throat, shining smooth and brown in the reflection of the _ryokan's_ light.  "The world is beautiful.  Beautiful. For you.  You know it's all for you, right?"_

_Ken shifted, looked away._

_"Daisuke…"_

_"The sky is shining for you," Daisuke whispered. His voice was shaking.   "I love you. I love you"_

_Ken stood up suddenly.  He couldn't bear it.  He grabbed Daisuke's arms and drew him close, was disturbed to see the brightness on his cheeks. The boy was crying.  Why was he…?_

_"Daisuke, what's going on?"_

_"I should be asking you__ that," the boy whispered, turning his head.  Ken furrowed his brow, stepped back._

_"I don't understand."_

_Daisuke dropped his head, looked away._

_"You don't love me, do you?" he asked._

_"I—" Ken's mouth worked, but for a moment no sound was forthcoming.  He swallowed, tried again.  "Daisuke I—"_

_"You kissed me, and you, we—I mean," he paused, drew a deep, shuddering breath, "What we did, we—together, it was…it wasn't because you love me. Was it?  Do you—could you love someone like me?"_

_"Dasiuke I­­--"_

_"Only because Takeru's gone.__  That's it, isn't it?  You just needed somebody—"_

_"No," Ken's lips moved, barely, framing the word.__  No_.  "Not with you.  It was never like that…with you."__

_Daisuke lifted his tear-streaked face.  "You're so beautiful," he said quietly. "I love you so much."_

_"I—" Ken reached out a hand, delicately touched Daisuke's face, turned it toward him, "I guess I could love you.  I think I—maybe I love you…." Daisuke flinched as though he'd been physically struck.  He pulled away, retreated to sit on the raised platform that ran alongside the building.  He drew his knees up to his chin._

_Ken stood as though he'd been turned to stone.  For a moment he didn't think that he could move.  He could see Daisuke, sitting there, and...and…he was in pain, wasn't he?  Because of Ken.  Because of…a word.  Because of a word._

_He opened his mouth. "Daisuke," he said.  His mouth was dry.  His lips were dry.  He shut his mouth, swallowed.  Tried again._

_"Dasiuke."___

_The boy raised his head.  Ken parted his lips, opened his mouth. A kiss to the night.  Love._

_"I love you."_

I love you.__

_The words were what mattered, right?_

Daisuke no koto ga, daisuki.  Daisuki desu.

_Daisuke stared at him.  He started to shake, slightly.  He turned his head and looked away. It was too much, maybe.  Yes.  Ken could feel it.  It was entirely too much for the other boy.  In some ways Daisuke was very fragile.  Far too sensitive for his own good.  Ken could feel it, the sense of paint, creeping through the air, in tendrils toward his body.  How was it that he could feel?  But he did…._

Dai 

    su 

         ki 

      de 

  su

Daisuke no koto ga….

_Daisuke stood up suddenly and before Ken could react the boy was in his arms, holding on tightly, burying his face against Ken's chest.  Shaking all over, he was shaking all over.  Ken imagined that he could hear words, somehow, broken, words choked out as sobs bubbling up from within his throat._

_"Not Takeru…not Takeru…oh God, Oh God…"_

_Ken swallowed.  he let his arms slip, slide around Daisuke's waist.  The boy moaned, quietly, pulled away, titled his head back. Their lips met, barely, a fragile kiss, and then they pulled apart.  Daisuke swallowed, looked down, pulled away.  His hands remained where they were, resting on Ken's chest.  He drew a shaky breath.  _

_Ken reached up, wrapped his hand around Daisuke's, felt the heat of the other boy's skin and the coldness of his own.  He said,"Can we go back inside?"_

_Daisuke looked up.  And Ken drew him back inside, into the room._

**

"Vienes Volando," he whispered.

Standing on the edge, in a high place, far above the surface.  Far above.  One the edge f the balcony and close to the sky, where he could hear the colors singing, all the blues of the sky, the crimsons and purples that wove through the immensity, that filled the air around him—he could hear it, feel it.  It breathed inside of him, in his lungs, like sticky ropy tendrils it crawled from the air through the holes in his body, through the holes in his skin.  It sang and breathed and whispered, it choked and suffocated.

_vienes__ volando_

come flying__

_"Flying_…"__

_It'll be like that, Ken. Like flying._

He made a soft sound like a breathless moan, turned his head, shut his eyes.  Let the sky trail gentle fingers over his throat.  Let himself be touched.  It was so beautiful, all in gold.  Gold and blue and colors that couldn't be seen even if they were _there_, invisible colors with beautiful noise, music.  Raindrops and star-music.

The balcony railing was not high.  A child could have climbed on it, stood on the edge.  Stood before it looking outward, out over the city.  The city. And he could stand on it, carefully, balancing, one foot on the perpendicular corners, standing up straight.  If he leaned a little this way or that he might lose his balance and it was a long way down.  A very long way.  He might be able to fly that far…

What would it be like?  he wondered.

The sky whispered.  _It's beautiful._

"But," he tried, over the sounds, "But people can't fly."

Could they?

Sobre tu cementerio sin paredes

donde los marineros se extravían,

mientras la lluvia de muerte cae,

                vienes volando.

(_Over that graveyard unmarked by a wall,_

_where__ even the mariner founders,._

_while__ the rains of your death fall,_

_                you come flying.)_

_(fall…)_

He wanted to fly.  Again.  It had been so long, so long, since he'd been free.  Everything was too much. It was too hard.  He wanted to be free again.  

Or maybe for the first time.

Mientras la lluvia de tus dedos cae,

Mientras la lluvia de tus huesos cae,

mientras to medulla y tu risa caen,

                vienes volando.

He reached out.  His lips opened.  He breathed.  He spoke:

" 'While the rain of your fingertip falls, while the rain of your bones falls, and your laughter and marrow fall down, you come flying.' "

Come flying, come flying, come, come come.

_Come. Ken._

He opened his eyes.

_Come._

_**_

_"Is Takeru here?"_

_The man stood back.  He raised an eyebrow._

_"No, Takeru's gone for the weekend.  Did you need to speak to him?"_

_"No I," he shook his head, tried to ignore the way the walls whispered at him.  "No, I just…I wanted to see him again.  I knew he was leaving…" Ken trailed off.  He couldn't think anymore.  It was too hard._

_Yamato was regarding him with an unreadable expression. Was it…concern?_

_Or pity?_

_He swallowed, took a step back.  It wasn't getting any better.  He needed to get away.  Yes.  He should leave.  He should never have come.  There was no place for him here._

_"Ken you don't look so good.  Why don't you come inside?" Yamato stood aside, clearing the doorway.  Ken took another step away._

_"No I—I need to go.  I shouldn't—I'm sorry.  Sorry I bothered you—"_

_"Okay," Yamato said, stepping quickly into the hallway, before Ken could react.  He grasped Ken's slim wrist and tugged him forward, gently but firmly.  "You look sick.  Come inside.  If you collapsed on the way home it would be my_ fault and I'm not prepared to live with that on my conscience.  __

_"I—" in spite of himself Ken felt a small smile quirk around his lips. He suffered himself to be led inside._

_"But it's not, I mean—not too much trouble?"_

_Yamato shut the door behind him.  Ken turned.  The man shrugged._

_"It's no trouble.  But, I'm surprised you're here."  Ken didn't answer.  He looked around the apartment.  It hadn't changed any since he'd last spoken to Takeru, over six months ago.  Ken sat on the couch and put his head in his hands.  He didn't feel very well, really. Not at all._

_"Do you want anything?" Yamato asked from the tiny kitchen area.  Ken looked up.  The blonde man was rummaging through the refrigerator.  "I've got some beer, some milk—"_

_"Water," Ken said quickly.  His mouth was dry.  He licked his lips._

_"Will do," there was the sound of a cupboard being opened and closed, and Yamato running the tap._

_"I'm surprised to see you back here, though, Ken. I thought you and my brother, you know.  Called it quits.  'Cause of Daisuke."_

_"Mm."__  Ken grunted a  noncommittal response.  When a gentle hand rested on his shoulder he started, and looked up into concerned blue eyes._

_"Hey."  Yamato smiled.  "A little jumpy?"_

_"I—yeah," Ken gave a shame-faced smile and accepted the proffered glass.  "I guess I was…it's been a weird couple of weeks, is all."_

_"Weird how?"__ Yamato asked, shifting a stack of magazines and seating himself beside the boy—himself nearly a man._

_Ken didn't answer. He held the glass in both hands and sipped from it gingerly, and let his gaze drift away to stare into space._

_"I don't know," he said absently.  "Just…weird.  And now Dad—­" and he cut himself off._

_Yamato didn't press him. The man picked up a magazine and ostensibly began flipping through it's glossy pages.  Once he gave a low whistle and Ken flicked a gaze in his direction. _

_"I should go," he said, beginning to stand._

_"Your parents are getting a divorce," Yamato said calmly, without raising his eyes from the magazine._

_Ken sat back down._

_"How—how did you know?"_

_Yamato placed the magazine on his knee and sighed.  He didn't meet Ken's eyes but gazed into the distance.  He said, "I don't know.  But it seems to be happening a lot and from the little Takeru told me I gathered your parents weren't exactly getting along."  Now he did meet Ken's eyes, and there was a faint sadness in his gaze.  _

_"I'm real sorry, Ken."_

_Ken raised a hand, felt it trembling.  He pressed it to his mouth and wrapped his other hand tightly around his wrist, until is hurt.  He was starting to shake, slightly.  He squeezed his eyes shut._

_"Hey."  _

_Yamato rested a hand on his shoulder.  Ken pulled his hand away from his mouth._

_"He's moving_!  Dad—he's going—to ___England__.  He's just going to leave—" He choked off a sob._

_No no no, the walls were whispering.  He remembered the green in the hallway, it was coming through inside, into the room.  They whispered, no no no.  No no no no no no._

_"Oh God—" he turned his face away and before he realized it he'd pressed his forehead against Yamato's shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to hide from the noise, the nauseating green that was seeping through everything, even his own skin, and the words, the round white syllables like smooth pebbles—he twisted his fingers in to Yamato's shirt, squeezed until the knuckles turned white, and shook all over._

_"Ken…" the man sounded confused, and a little lost. Slowly his arms stole around Ken's body, gently drew him into an embrace.  And Ken collapsed against him, against his chest, and tried to choke back the horrible black tears that didn't stop, that wouldn't stop._

_A gentle hand touched Ken's face, lifted him up.  Tilted his chin back and brushed against his eyes, smoothing away the wild black strands and chasing away the tears.  Ken opened his eyes, met the man's, and his lips parted slightly when Yamato's fingers brushed against them.  The man leaned forward, slightly._

_"Ken…" _

_And there was a breathless pause, as Yamato hesitated, before turning his head, slightly, and pressing his mouth to Ken's in a gentle kiss._

_______________________________________________________________________


	8. Yami no hitobito

I see him out my window

on a very different street,

where leaves fall up in the Springtime

and the sun sets in the east.

--Karate (Airport)

____________________________________________________

(Yami~8)

Yami no hitobito

She came home to a quiet house.

Mrs. Ichijouji walked through the door, put her purse on the floor, and slipped her feet out of her shoes with a smile sigh, as she did every day.  As she had done every day for the past two years, ever since the divorce.  She lifted her eyes and surveyed the small apartment, bathed in the liquid shadows of late afternoon, and stretched the kinks out of her back, and licked her lips.  

Something wasn't right.  No.  Something wasn't right at all.

She stepped forward.

"Ken?"  she called into the darkness.

**

"Daisuke."

The voice was soft in his consciousness—Daisuke looked up from his homework and met dark, serious eyes.

"Miyako.  What—"

"It's Koushirou," the girl said quietly.  "He's been arrested."

**

_They'll sing for you._

He parted his lips and lifted his hands.  Slowly.  His fingertips to touch.  Touch the blue, touch the colors and sounds.  The sky. He wanted to touch the sky.

And then it came.

The sound.  Like a discordant bell.  Like a ringing in shades of gold cascading into brilliant refractions.  Light turning to light.  It shattered the air.  

_"Ken?"_

His eyes opened.  His throat trembled.

"God…" he breathed.

**

"What, _again_?" Daisuke couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice.

Miyako shook her head sadly, unnaturally brown hair flipping from side to side. "He's such a Goddamned sociopath," she said, crossing the room and seating herself on the only chair.  She sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face.

Daisuke sat up.

"I don't think he's exactly a sociopath—"

"Oh come off it.  Everybody knows—he acts like the rules don't apply to him.   He _thinks_ the rules don't apply to him, he's so damn smart. Thinks he can get away with anything.  That's what genius does to you.  You think you get to make all the rules, get to decide right and wrong for other people."

"I don't understand."

"Just—you know what we talked about, last time I called?  He was going on about how information should   free, and the means to access that information should be free—hardware and software.  That's people's _livelihood_, Daisuke.  It's just wrong, distributing this stuff for free all over the damned world."

Daisuke looked down at his textbook, blinked at the black lines.

"I guess we should be glad his interests run toward data and silicon, then, and not—"

"Murder?" Miyako asked dryly.  "Or grand larceny?  But that's what I'm talking about.  The rules don't apply to him because of his intellect. It's only his choice that prevents him from doing worse—"

"I think he's got morals, Miyako. I'm sure he doesn't think killing or stealing is okay."

"He _commits_ theft on a daily basis, Daisuke.  That's a fact.  The fact he deals in intangibles for the most part, doesn't make it any less harmful to the victims."

"I guess…" he sighed.

"They're gonna kick him out of college," Miayko added.  She'd turned her head, was staring out the window.  Daisuke heard her sigh.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Just—it seems like everything's changed so much.  Nothing is how we thought it was going to be, Daisuke.  People we thought we knew—its like they're all strangers, you know?"

"Hey."  Daisuke slid to the floor, came to Miyako and put an arm around her shoulder.  He felt her shudder at the touch, slightly, then relax.  "I know what you mean," he said quietly.

"I know what you mean."

**

_Don't listen, Ken. That's not the way._

He shut his eyes, but it was wrong.

"Nn," he made a tiny noise.

Came again.  The noise. Glittering gold, like film.  Like gossamer, layers laid over one another.  Like glass.  A voice, a word.

"Ken?"

**

"It's like Ken, isn't it?" Miyako asked after a while.

Daisuke drew back. He seated himself on the computer table and turned to gaze out the window.

"I don't know what you mean," he said quietly.

"Just that people change.  And they do.  All the time—people we thought we knew, things we thought we understood…" she trailed off and gave a soft, bitter laugh.  "I remember when I first found out Takeru and he—that they were seeing each other."

Daisuke laughed too, a sharp sound.

"I remember that too."

"And it was like my whole world came apart. Everything I thought I knew…and then I had to try to pick up the pieces and put them back together in a way that made sense, but the world I came up with—it wasn't anything like the way it had been before."

"Yeah," Daisuke said distantly.

"And it isn't the world that's changed at all, really.  Just my perception of it."

"Yeah."

Softly.

"God."  Daisuke shut his eyes.  "Damn it all."  He hand twitched where it rested on his thigh, then balled into a fist, and Daisuke slammed it against his leg. "Damn it!  It was all supposed to be so simple!"

"But people grow up, Daisuke," Miyako said, "And things change.  They change…" she stood up.  "I should go."

"Miayko?"  Daisuke turned his head, looked at the girl.

"Mm?"

"I've got pictures.  You wanna look at some pictures?"

She smiled.

"Yeah, alright."

**

  
  


Mrs. Ichijouji walked down the hallway.

"Ken?" she called again, into the darkness.

Why was it so dark?  It was still bright outside, yet the house seemed to be bathed in shadows.  Had it always been this way? So dark inside?  It was almost chilling, she could feel a coldness in her bones.  This wasn't right, surely…?

Surely.

She took a deep breath outside of Ken's room.  She raised a hand to knock, paused, and exhaled, her hand coming to rest on the door.

It opened, slightly.  She stepped inside.

"What—?" she stared down at her feet.  The destroyed computer lay strewn across the floor, like a victim, hideously mutilated.  Mrs. Ichijouji nudged a cable with her toe.  Nothing.  Dead.  It was dead.

She looked up.

"Ken?"

Darkness in the room, but the curtains were partially open, fluttering in the breeze.

She stepped forward.

"Are you in here?" she called, and when no answer was forthcoming she stepped to the curtains and drew them aside.

"Oh…" she whispered, "Oh no…."

_No…._

"_Ken!" She screamed his name, the word tearing itself out of her throat, tearing and tearing, into the air.  She saw him, saw him standing, saw flinch at the sound._

"Oh God…" she came forward slowly, carefully, feeling her heart beating in her chest.  Feeling the pain, the fear.  Outside into the bright sunlight.  Into the light that bathed her sun, made him beautiful to behold.

He was standing on the edge, on the balcony, feet resting on the railing.  They lived on the twenty-third floor and the sounds of the city wafted upward, into her consciousness.  She drew a shaky breath.

"Ken, come down," she managed, faintly.

_He was standing on the edge.  On the edge.  Oh God…_

"Please come down," she whispered.

And slowly.  Slowly he turned his head, and the wind caught his hair and stirred it, and his gaze didn't meet hers but moved past her, or into her, through her body, into some distant space, some private world.  His lips parted.

"Mama…."

"Shh.  Ken.  Ken it's okay. Come down.  Please come down.  You can't—it's dangerous there.  It's dangerous there."

_abunai__ kara_

She stepped forward, carefully, started to raise a hand.  Her son turned away, turned his head away and stared back out over the city.  She drew a bit closer. Panting, her heart in her throat, her eyes burning because she was afraid to blink, afraid to break her gaze, o turn her eyes away.  Afraid that if she broke that contact her son would disappear, like a breath on the breeze. She imagined his body, tumbling, tumbling down---

She lunged, silently, grabbed a pale hand where it hung, limp and lifeless, and clutched it to her chest before her son could react, and she pulled, one arm to his waist, jerking hard.  No time for niceties, no time for detail.  Just crude motion, just pulling hard with all the weight of her body, even though he outweighed her and if he chose to pull her then her grip would tear away and she would be left empty-handed and he would go tumbling tumbling downward into the brilliant sunlight alone.  A body alone hurtling toward the ground.  

But he didn't fall.  He spilled backward into her arms, over top of her, and they both crashed backward against the railing.  Mrs Ichijouji's head rang, she couldn't tell if she'd struck it or not.  Her breath—she could hear herself breathing.  Everything was painfully clear.

_don't__ let go. don't let go.  don't let go._

She remained where she was clutching his hand, his body to her.  She was shaking and a bright whiteness had opened up inside her head.  She knew that it was fear.

"Mama," her son breathed, faintly, words from barely-parted lips.  Mrs. Ichijouji exhaled.

"Mama let me go," he said.  

She squeezed his hand tighter.

**

Pictures scattered over the floor, glossy surfaces reflecting the sunlight.

"…and this is one from Taichi's birthday, remember?  That was the year before Takeru left.

"We all look pretty happy," Miyako mused, taking the photo from Daiuske's hand and inspecting it.  She made a face.  "Ugh.  That was the year I bleached my hair and it turned that funky pale lavender color.  Look at it, I look like I got a powder puff stuck on my head."

"It was pretty short.  I liked it, though."

"It looked stupid.  It pissed my parents off a little, though.  Until my brother announced he was joining that cult—"

"Here's one of you and Ken," Daisuke interrupted, shoving the photo under her nose.  

Miyako grimaced, then said, "I really though we might have a chance, at the time. I mean, I hoped there was a chance for him and me.  That we could be a couple.  I should've known…."

"I guess he was already seeing Takeru then, behind all our backs," Daisuke said quietly.  "Bastards couldn't said something."

"They didn't think we'd understand."

Daisuke laughed and shook his head.  "Look, here's the year after. We all went on that picnic together."

"I remember."

"Only Takeru was gone…God…." Daisuke fell silent.

"I guess it was never going to be quite right with you two, huh?" 

"It was like he was reaching for something—that's all we ever were, you know?  Two bodies finding each other.  But our minds…they were a million miles apart."

"It wasn't all your fault, Daisuke."

"I know.  I guess.  Just—I was never anything but a replacement for Takeru."

Miyako shook her head.  "I don't think that's true."

"I don't think he ever loved me," he whispered.  "No matter what he said.  I always knew, in my gut, in my heart.  He wanted something I couldn't give."

"Can we talk about something else?" Miyako said suddenly.  "Don't you have any _happy _pictures?"

"They're all happy.  We're smiling, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Miyako agreed, looking down at the photos in her lap.  "We are."

"It's hard to know the truth, isn't it?"

"Yeah."  She reached for another stack of photos, but drew back, eyes fixated on one print lying nearly hidden by all the others.  She reached down, drew it out.  Its surface reflected the sun, made it impossible to see, at first.  She turned it away from the light.

"Did you take this?"

"Take what?  What is it?"

Wordlessly she turned it over, proffered the photograph to the boy.  Daisuke took it, and his eyes narrowed sharply.

"What the hell is this?" his voice was dark.

"I don't know.  It looks like—"

"It is," Daisuke said.  "Damn."

He flung the picture on the floor between them.  Miyako tried not to look at it, but is drew her gaze.  She found herself staring fixedly at the image.

It was Yamato, kissing Ken.

**

_Warmth.___

Don't do it.

_His eyes slid closed in spite of himself.  Yamato's lips were warm and soft where they pressed against his own.  He knew he shouldn't be doing this, knew he should try to pull away.  _

Daisuke…__

_Only he couldn't.  No. It was wrong and it was his own fault, too.  But Yamato was so warm, his mouth—_

_Gentleness.__  Yes._

_That was what he needed._

_He leaned back, arching his back a bit, melting into the kiss.   Yamato's hands slid to his arms, holding him.  The man pulled away, but didn't release him.  Ken knew that he should run.  Run, run and don't stop—but he couldn't move.  He was frozen.  _

_Yamato moved, kissed him again, softly, and leaned further into Ken, so that the dark-haired boy was slipping backward.  He brought a hand up, against Yamato's shirt, but it wasn't to push him away.  He was pulling closer, twisting long fingers into the fabric, drawing himself on a line toward the man._

_And Yamato stopped, pulling away.  Ken was panting slightly, he slid back across the couch, head bowed, hands on the cushions.  Trying to stabilize—_

_"I'm sorry," Yamato was saying, "Sorry."_

_"Why—" Ken's lips were dry, his lips trembled.  "_Why?_"_

_"you're—God you're beautiful, you know that?  I just—and you were in so much pain.  I'm sorry.  I wanted to make it stop."_

_"Mm," Ken raised a trembling hand, pushed his hair aside, tucked long shining strands behind his ears.  He was shaking inside._

_"It's very bad," he managed, faintly._

I'm very bad.__

_"I'm sorry," Yamato said again._

_Ken stood._

_"I should go."  He didn't make eye contact or even look in the blonde man's direction, just walked, head bowed, to the door.  He was afraid to touch the heavy door, afraid of what might happen out there, in the hallway. What he might see, what he might hear.  Bu7t he needed to, he had to leave—_

_"Ken."  _

_A hand on his arm.__  He started, pulled away._

_"Listen," Yamato said quietly.  He was close—how close was he?  Not far away, he seemed to be whispering in Ken's ear… "Listen, Ken, my band has a gig tomorrow night on campus, in the __Union__.  Why don't you come by?  It'll make you feel better, get your min off things."_

_Ken exhaled.  No.  It was wrong, it was bad.  Of course the answer was no.  The walls whispered, greedy, hungry for his answer. For shame.  Shame._

_"I—ok."___

_The word was like a thunderclap in his own head._

_He could _feel_ Yamato's smile._

_"Great.  I'll see you there."_

_"Yeah."___

_He didn't wait anymore, but grabbed the handle and flung the door open, fled into the green darkness.  Into the words whispering like bones. Green paint and white bones, and words words words._

Oh no oh no.  Wrong.  You're wrong, you're bad.  Bad.  Bad.  Bad.__

_He stumbled down the stairs, made it halfway before his legs gave out and he sank to the floor, clamping his hands over his ears, digging his fingers into the skin._

_"I'm not—" he whispered, "Not, I'm not.  Shut up.  Shut up shut up shut up…"  over and over again.  He couldn't even hear the words. All he could hear were the bone-white green walls, and the whispering shadows, like pain.  Like water made into pain that trembled and quivered at the edges of his skin.  All over his body. No.  It hurt.  It was too much.  Too much.  All too much._

_He staggered to his feet, hands still on his ears, and ran._

_________________________________________________________________________


	9. Yami no ai

I want a lover I don't have to love.

I want a boy so drunk he doesn't talk.

--Bright Eyes

______________________________________________________________

(Yami~9 )

Yami no ai 

_Green._

Sea green. Like the ocean, like spray.  Like water.

He looked up from his hands at the ceiling.  A different ceiling, a different space.  A place where he didn't belong.  Except that maybe it didn't matter.  Yes.  That was right all along.  It didn't matter where he was.

_I'm here._

_Ken._

He raised his fingers to his lips, felt the soft cold skin there, then dropped his hand into his lap.

**

_Music filtered through the air, filling everything.  Filling the night sky as it faded from blue to purple, as the stars came out as tiny, brilliant lights._

_He leaned against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his fists to the sides of his head._

_"Shut up," Ken whispered into the air, "Leave me alone.  Please, please…"_

onegai…

_He'd been doing it all night long, doing it for days, ever since Yamato's apartment.  Trying to make the voices stop, the whispering stop, the noises stop.  And he couldn't.  He tried to remember how it had been before.  It hadn't always been this way, surely.  Had it?  What was wrong with him?  Something was wrong, the walls shouldn't be whispering this way.  But they were, all night long, as he lay awake staring at the ceiling trying not to hear the voices of the stars…_

_No.  It wasn't fair._

It doesn't matter.  'Fair' is a concept for children and imbeciles.

_He started to shake._

_"You're not real," he breathed, "Not real.  Can't be…"_

That was how it went, you doing those things in those days.  With Daisuke, and Takeru.  You're sick and wrong—

_"Nn—"_

You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You abomination.

_"No…"_

No wonder he left.  It was your fault.  You're bad on the inside, deep down to the core.  You did it, you made it, you caused it.

_"No, please…" he twisted his hands into his hair, tried to find the pain, to override with pain, but it wasn't strong enough.  Coming in short white bursts, but the sounds were louder—_

You did it.  It's inside you.  Corruption and evil inside you.  You make everything around you sick and wrong. It's your fault.  Your fault.__

_Corrupt.  He was…bad inside.  Down in his belly, in his gut.  He tainted the air around him, foul and sick-smelling—_

_He opened his eyes._

_Ken opened his eyes.  He was almost really there.  He could almost really feel.  The stars in the sky, the purple sky and the green horizon where the sun was setting in the chemicals, the sky stained blue and yellow to make green.  Sick.  Yes.  Everything was sick and wrong._

Your fault.

_It was in him, all of it.  In him.  His body was coming apart in pieces, inside his organs were disintegrating like puzzle pieces, corroding away, falling into a pit—he unfolded upright and leaned against the wall, trying to breath, trying to remember how.  He was wrong inside and he infected the outside.  He didn't deserve to live, he didn't deserve to be.  He made it, he did it._

_He started to walk._

_He meant to go by the union, to see all the people.  He could hear it, even here, the music like silver strands rising into the sky.  A net dripping mercury-wire all over everything, flung into the sky to hang on the stars.  he walked, he stumbled, raised his arms and flailed at the wires only they weren't really there but he could feel them, feel the wet silver like poison cold on his skin.  He gagged, looked at his hands; his fingers twitched. Ugly. Bad.  Wrong._

_But the wires were gone.  They weren't really there._

_"My fault," he whispered, "My fault. It was my fault.  I did it.  I did it."_

_And everything was bad and everything was wrong and he was going away anyway.  He walked, his legs moved short, slow, fast, in jerks and statrs he made a broken line into the darkness under the light of the falling stars.  He shivered.  Breaking his heart, breaking his heart, his heart._

_And there was—_

_A place.__  It rose up and the ground plunged down, a wall running along grass.  He stopped, swaying._

_He wanted to fly._

_"You can come home here," a voice whispered.  Ken's throat trembled, and his heart, in his chest._

Come home.__

_"I wanna go home," he said softly._

mata modoritai

modoritai modoritai modoritai

_"It'll be alright, Ken.  Come home.  Come free.  Fly.  Come flying."_

_And someone else said_

Ken?__

_He froze._

_"Ken?"_

_A word.__  A word into his consciousness._

modorit—

_"Ken?"_

mo

_"Are you okay?"_

_He turned his head._

_"Ya…mato?"___

_His hands were shaking.  He was shaking. all over.  He hurt._

_MODORITAI!_

_A scream.__  Ripped through his consciousness.  He squeezed his eyes shut and his hands flew trembling to his head, fingertips pressed to his skull, quivering, spasming, against and away like spider-legs, feather soft—he moaned._

_"Ken, my God, what's wrong—" arms enfolded him gently, pulled him back, away, onto the solid earth.  He moaned again, louder this time, mouth opening and pain spilling between his lips in a dark viscous river.  Poison.  Spilling poison out of his mouth. _

_"Don't—" he pushed away, staggered free, "Don't touch me!  Don't touch me—I'll make you sick, I'll make you—" he broke off, turned his head to stare into the sky.  Dead. The light was gone.  Everything was blackness._

_"What?  Ken?  You'll make me what?"_

_"I'll make you die," he said._

_"No," and his voice was soft, assured, quiet.  It resonated below the noise of the night, below the stars.  Below all the pain. "Come on.  You won't make me do anything I don't want to, anything I can't do myself.  You don't have that kind of power."_

_He squeezed his eyes shut, trembling._

_"It won't _stop_," he whispered._

_Again he was embraced, and this time he did not pull away._

_"I'll make it stop.  Come on.  Come with me."_

_Ken allowed himself to be led away into the night._

**

"We just need to keep him for a short time, for observation.  He won't be here for more than a week or so, Mrs. Ichijouji."

"If he responds to the medication."

"That's right.  If we're able to treat him with medication and some therapy we should be able to release him within the month."

"That seems like a long time."

"It's not.  With this kind of illness, everything takes time."

**

_"But where are we?"_

_"We're close.  I have to go back and play a set in a few. I just wanted to show you something."_

_"What is it?"_

_The lights went on.  The room flooded into whiteness.  Ken flinched, slid back into the dark, silent hallway. An hand wrapped around his arm._

_"Shh.  It's okay. Don't be scared."_

_He suffered himself to be led inside._

_"Where are we?"_

_"This is where they keep the old music collections.  The library has tons of old records and stuff. Things that haven't seen the light of day for twenty years, or longer.   You should see this, original recordings—blues masters and jazz and American rock and roll—"_

_Ken stood in the room, feeling the pain in the back of his head, at the base of his skull.  He couldn't think to speak. There was nothing to say._

_"But look.  I found something I thought you'd like.  Here."_

_There was a noise.  Ken looked._

_A record player had been switched on.  He could see Yamato, standing like a figure in the desert, covered in dust, bathed in bright light, too-white light.  Bathed in it and hazy around the edges like a figure in a dream. And the scratch and skip of a record player, the hissing of speakers. The tangle of wire, he could feel that too, the electric discord—he put his hands over his ears._

_"No, stp."_

_"It'll be okay.  Here, listen."_

_listen__…_

_And then there was a voice.  A soft deep voice speaking English words._

"Here's a song my mother learned me to sing…"

_with__ a cadence like poetry._

_"What is this?" he whispered._

_"Gospel."___

"Mother was a solo singer and she sang in the Bethlehem Baptist church.  Usually whenever there was a program they'd always call on her for a solo.  She would take me by the hand and I would stand there while she sang, look up and repeat the words out of her mouth until I learned the song."

_"I don't understand."_

_"Shhh."___

"And the song goes a little something like this."

_Then there was music._

Beautiful stars 

of love

shining from heaven above

bidding the world to look 

that way

radiance is the glow 

over the earth below

cheering me on to pray

for the day

I'm singing stars

of a wondrous love

oh they are shining

shining from above

filling the earth with light 

scattering through the  night

beautiful stars of wondrous love.

_kirei___

_kireina__ hoshi_

_But it wasn't the same at all._

_"That's—" he was starting to tremble inside._

_It _was_ beautiful, but it was more.  More than beautiful, more than words.  More than sensation.  It was like being filled from head to toe, like the ocean, like the sky.  Like being lifted up and like falling down.  Like having his wings torn off.  Like dying._

_"It's beautiful," he whispered, feeling his knees go weak._

I just wanna sing it one more time…

_Yamato, standing in the light, and then the light came forward and he was in his arms and he was kissing him, bending him backwards, Ken bending backwards while the song played and the women's voices came on in an exultation of love and beauty and it sang inside of Ken's head, sang like a drop of water, like mercury threaded on a wire, spun through his head through his skull, pulled out through blood and ran dripping cold and sharp and hard—_

I hurt__

_He moaned and leaned into the kiss, pressing deeper, harder, urging Yamato's kiss, his tongue tasting Ken, finding him there, seeking him out.  But the closer he got the farther away he was and Ken couldn't fell him at all, only the music that was too loud, jarringly painfully loud but so perfect so beautiful squealing through his skin into his head through his brain through his mind—_

_Yamato's hand slid, down, lower, to his shirt, and the smooth skin above his hips, but that wasn't what was important, only the music, the sound, the pain and glory of it, the love_

_love__…_

_Yes that was it.  Not _"ai"_ in Japanese but "love" __in English, which was all different inside and outside, which made all the difference.  Love inside his head, all full and immense like a bursting pain trying to shatter him and it was wonderful and incredible and it hurt so much__._

_--_didn't know he was stumbling backwards, his hands to the table, didn't feel Yamato push him back, didn't feel the hands at his jeans, didn't feel himself exposed, or the hands running over his skin. He didn't feel it and didn't know—

_and the music stopped, hissing and skipping _shh-snap, shh-snap,_ but that didn't matter either because he could still feel it playing inside his head, feel it and the stars outside screaming and twisting and the music from the student union where Yamato's band was playing without him and felt it writhe into a knotted mess of agony and glory and wonder and hope an_

love__

_Everything was love after all._

shhh

                snap

shhh

                snap

shhh

                snap

**

"But the mediation will work, won't it?"

"It's impossible to say at this point. Some patients respond well to medication, if we can find the right dose, the right drug, the right combination if necessary.  Some don't.  It has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis."

"But that—that's like you're pulling his treatment out of the air!"

"I realize this is difficult for you, Ma'am, but understand—we're going to do everything we can for your son.  Many people with his diagnosis are able to go on to lead relatively normal, full lives.  That's all we want for him and we intend to do everything in our power to help him."

"People with this disease—"

"It's what we believe to be undifferentiated schizophrenia.  His experience of the world is nowhere near what you or I perceive."

"It's an illness.  It's a disease.  Isn't it?"

"Of a kind, I suppose you might say."

"Then you should be able to cure him."

"I'm afraid not.  There is no 'cure' for this kind of illness.  We can treat it.  We can do everything in our power to help Ken, to give him as much of his life back as possible. But he will never be the child that you knew, he won't be the Ken you remember, and he won't have the life he might have, had he never been subjected to the affects of his schizophrenia."

"Then—is his life over?"

"No.  He'll have to adjust, as will you, as will all the members of your family.  You'll both have to re-evaluate your lives, and your goals and your hopes, and build them in a way that is realistic and non-harmful."

"I see."

**

_And when it was over, and Ken lay staring blank-eyed at the ceiling, Yamato leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Do you want to come and hear me sing?"  Then Ken allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, and he trailed after Yamato, his pale hand cold in the grasp of the man's, his eyes blank and far-away._

_The music played in his head all night long, and he never heard Yamato sing, though he sat close to the stage with his head cocked to one side, an empty expression on his face. _

__________________________________________________

_A/N: As far as I know the quote is credited correctly.  I heard this song on the radio once and haven't heard it since, but the lyrics stuck with me and I went hunting high and low for it.  They were just too perfect to pass up._


	10. Yami no arawashite

_a/n__: Big thanks to Sug-chan and her wonderful brainstorming brain, without which this would not have made it to type.________________________________________________________________

You're no here anymore, true or false?

You're not here anymore,

true 

or

false?

--Boom Boom Satellites

___________________________________________________________

(Yami~10)

Yami no arawashite 

He should have screamed.

He should have.  When they did these things to him.  He turned his head, watched the needle slide under the skin on the inside of his elbow, the blue vein spurt without opening, reaching out and drawing the long thin metal rod into itself.  He watched but there were no words anyway, and no sounds, he didn't have an allotment of sounds.  He didn't scream because there were lists of things for screaming and holding still and some of them were kept in 'B' column.  They were keeping track of 'B' column and he was staying inside for good these days. 

The Kaiser had a hand in these sorts of things.

The needle pulled out of his vein and he watched it slide, then looked up, past the nurse, and watched the walls flicker.  Everything flickered and ran together and the corners vanished; the walls were a flat screen.  Feel it. He could feel it.  His lips parted slightly and his eyes flicked to the nurse, the needle, then back over her shoulder.

"They're trying to get in," he said to the nurse.  She put the needle on her try and picked it up, turning away.

"There's no-one here but you, Mr. Ichijouji," she said, and left the room.

When she'd been gone a while he slid off the bed and walked to the door.  Carefully, when the walls flickered and hissed, white noise and static, like the television screen, he stayed away from the edges, kept to the center of the room.  And his sock feet were thick with poison, he could feel it with every step, venom on the edges of his skin.  But he reached the door and checked it, okay.  Locked.  They always locked it. Sometimes if he listened closely he could hear the people outside and hear the shuffle of feet—sometimes they screamed.  Would they let him out soon?  He wanted to go out.

"Notttt-t-t szzzhnnn, K-K-Knnn."

"What?"  He turned.  The walls yes, but also an outline, a silhouette in the middle of the floor, near the corner of the bed.  Ken flinched, then squinted, trying to see clearly.  Only he couldn't and it made the corners of his eyes twinge, as though the air were filled with smoke.  He couldn't see and the shape of the person in the room filled up to the top of its head with static, like the walls, flickered at the edges, blurred and ran into nothingness.

"Won't let you ouuuuuuutttttttt," hard to hear, words running, thick and spiraling up and down, below the range of hearing into subsonic, or up, spinning up into a scream, "You're nottttthhh rrrrhhhheaddy, Keeeehhhhhh-k-k-k-"

"I am!" he protested, "I would be, if I could just see—"

"Whhhth dzhou wanttozhee?"

"Uh—" he shook his head, stared at the figure, covered his eyes and tried again, "You."

"Can'tt-t-ttttt…"

"Why not?"

"Cannnthzzzzhhh…" the noise of speech trailed off and the figure flickered out.  Ken moved toward the bed and stretched out a hand, but there was nothing to touch or feel and his fingers passed through empty air.

"I know you're _here,_" he said helplessly, turning in a circle, "Why can't I see you?"

Colors and—things it didn't do to remember.  The world flickered again, once, but that was all.  And the noise of speech again, but quietly.  Cool and perfected.

_Shhh__. Ken.__  It doesn't mean you have  to hurt._

"Can't—" he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the ball of his hand to his temple.  "I can't see anymore…"

_Don't worry.  There won't be anything left soon._

"You used to let me see things."

_I didn't want to hurt you.  Not anymore._

"Well do you feel something." He dropped his hand and opened his eyes.  There was nobody there.  "And why can't I see you?" he demanded angrily.

_It isn't always about vision._

"What is it then?  What am I supposed to think?  You can do all these sorts of things—"

_Shh__.  Hush. It's not about pain._

"Well it doesn't hurt, if that's what you mean."

_But you worry a lot._

"Look, the walls are here," he waved a hand sharply at the walls, "Isn't that the wrong kind of color for you?"

_I said I'd take care of you._

"You never said that."

_But it's true._

"Hmm." He laughed quietly and rubbed his arm where the needle had been.  "Hurts."

_It's bound to._

"They like that, I think.  You remember what it feels like?"

_No, I don't._

"Well why don't you shut up anyway!  It hurts—" he squeezed his arm, then shut his eyes and sank down beside the bed, squatting on his toes.  "Just leave me alone."

_You don't mean that, Ken._

"Go away," he buried his head against the bed and let his hair fall around his face. "I wish they'd cut my hair."

_I'll always be here._  But the voice grew faint and then was gone, he could feel the lightness in his head.  So that was okay then.  Nothing like pain for going away, and the light of the sun was shining a lot more under his skin. He could feel it.

"I feel it," he said to the emptiness.  "I remember you."  Sun and poison. Rain.  If he tried hard he could remember rain and the way it felt on nothing and carried sickness with it, to run down his skin and drizzle and burn like acid until smoke rose up.

"It's blood, you," he said, face turned away from the bed and staring at the wall, "It's not better for being like this or your eyes, I mean I saw them a lot, what happened to those cutting open with glass?"  No he couldn't remember.  And he was tired.  He crawled up onto the bed, claws for hands, and collapsed across it, curling up and shutting his eyes.

"I hear you.  You aren't there but I can hear it.  And the walls, the walls, your eyes…you're not real.  No.  Never like that shaking, you and me, yeah, okay. You and me.  Okay."

**

Daisuke ticked his pencil back and forth in his fingers and stared vaguely out the window. He could hear Shindou moving around behind him, riffling through books and making general studying noises.  He dropped his gaze to stare at his textbook but the words blurred together and Daisuke sighed, then looked out the window again.

"Man, if you're not going to study, why don't you go outside so I don't have to listen to you sighing?" Shindou said from behind him. Daisuke pivoted halfway around in his chair and shot a glare at the other boy, who regarded him blandly.  There was no malice in his gaze, and Daisuke, sighing, was forced to concede the point, however unsubtle it may have been.  No sense in _both_ of them failing.

"I'm going outside," Daisuke said, as though the idea were wholly his own, and he snapped up his book, pencil and notepad and stalked out of the room. Behind him he thought he heard a muffled, "Good," as the door was closing, but he chose to ignore it.  Instead he squared his shoulders and marched outside into the blazing sunlight.

"Dammit—!" he flung up an arm to shield his face and cowered in the shadow of the building until his eyes adjusted, and when he did finally step out into the sun he shaded his eyes anyway and stared at the ground as he walked.

He found a comfortable spot in the shelter of a fir tree and cracked open the textbook again, but this time didn't even bother to look at it and instead stared out across the campus and watched the students moving across his line of sight.  He drummed his heels on the pavement and fiddled idly with the pages of his book.  The sunlight flickered at the edges of his vision, over his eyelashes, and he could see rainbows nearby, iridescent and fine.

He sighed heavily and pushed the book away, onto the bench beside himself.  He wondered what Miyako was up to—he hadn't spoken to her in the past few days, not since, well…

But she'd been busy and so had he, so it wasn't as though they'd been avoiding each other, merely that there hadn't been much time these days for anything but schoolwork, at least on Miyako's end, and Daisuke was at least _pretending_ that he had work to do.  They weren't avoiding each other at all.

Mrs. Ichijouji, though—she was another matter.  Daisuke had visited her more than once in the past several days and the woman had been studiously unforthcoming with information about Ken, keeping their conversations brief and her responses curt, without volunteering any real news herself. Daisuke couldn't imagine that Ken, with the way he'd been when he'd left him, was carrying on his life in a normal manner, but Daisuke couldn't get any information and didn't know what was going on.  He'd begun to grow very frustrated.

He was considering running back into the dorm for his cellphone to call Miyako when he became aware of footsteps behind him.  Someone drew breath to speak.

"They said I might find you here."

Daisuke spun around and looked up.  His mouth opened and for a moment he couldn't speak.  

"K-_Ken?_"

The apparition smiled at him, a warm and guileless expression, and Daisuke felt thickness tighten around his throat and in his chest.  

"Hello Daisuke."

He stood up.  "How—"

"I asked around.  You weren't that hard to track down."

"No—I mean—h…" but he couldn't ask the question.  _How are you like this?  How are you here, how are you—_

_How are you sane?_

"Um," he dropped his gaze to his shoes. "It's good to see you."

"Yeah."  Ken stepped forward, toward the bench, and leaned on it, pale fingers curving over the top wooden slat.  "I missed you."

_I miss you._

Daisuke raised his head.  "You did?"

"Of course I did.  But it isn't your fault.  Things happened—well they shouldn't have happened that way. I blame myself entirely."

Daisuke found himself shaking his head.  "It wasn't your fault. You weren't yourself."

"No."  

Daisuke realized that there was a chill in the air, in spite of the bright sunlight.  He shivered a little and drew back.  Ken leaned forward a bit more, so that Daisuke could see the shadows in his eyes.

"I wasn't myself at all."

And Ken smiled. Daisuke stared at him, at the smile that split his face and showed his teeth, and he realized that he was sliding back another step, away from the dark-haired boy.  Ken's eyes flicked down, then up, and he straightened and stood back from the bench.

"I missed you," Ken said again.  Daisuke took a deep breath, and then the wind came up strong and tossed the trees and Daisuke flinched, blinking hard, and there was nobody there at all.  He was alone.   Perhaps he'd always been alone.

He snatched up his books and hurried away, walking quickly back to the dorm.

**

He let his hands flicker over the walls.  He couldn't hear it but he was sure the paint was there.  Well, he could feel it anyway, so there was that.  Only they were bleeding the cold and his fingers were crackling.

He was sure it wasn't supposed to work that way.  That's what someone was saying, he could hear someone saying that it was wrong, and Ken held his hand to his jaw but the noise wouldn't stop so he tried his ears instead but that didn't help at all.

_"Not supposed to be that way. Wouldn't stop for you, wouldn't make it any better—"_

"Shut up, shut up," he said, his litany, a monotone.  Why was he alone?  Couldn't someone come in his direction?  If he pushed hard enough would the walls open up?  Maybe there was another room on the other side, maybe someplace else.  He remembered there used to be a park on the other side—

_"Now come on then I'm going to show you whatever you want, didn't you think that would work better than leaving it alone for a long time?  Oh don't put your hands there, look at them, they're filthy."_

He drew his hands away from the wall and stared at his palms and fingers.

"They're clean," he said tremulously.

_"Well they were until you put them on the wall.  Isn't that just disgusting?"_

"They were never clean…."

_"You don't even know what clean is."_  And they laughed.  Ken hissed air through is teeth and clamped his hands over his ears but they laughed anyway.

"Help me," he moaned, "Stop, please. Stop.  Shut up.  Shut up, please—" but they laughed, they kept laughing horrible noise giggling and wheezing, choking on it—_bile—_because he was wrong and God it was _hilarious_—

"Stop it stop it _stopitstopit_—" his voice pitched up, up, rising, he could hear it but he could still hear words, words.

_"You're filthy, ought to be cut open, isn't that better?  Better to be open and see if your skin flakes away."_

He screamed.  He screamed, he _did,_ screamed until the door banged open and he was hauled bodily off the floor and flung onto the bed and then the sharp horrible teeth in his arm and then a beat—_one, two_—and his eyes opened wide and he looked past the shoulders of the bodies that held him.  He could see the walls now.   He could see. And a face.  And—

"I see him.  I see him.  He's here."  And he smiled.  

But—

_black_

**

_"Well that doesn't make any sense at all, Daisuke."_

"I _swear,_ Miyako, that's exactly what happened. May God strike me dead for lying."

He heard Miyako sigh.  _"That would be a lot more convincing if you were Christian, Daisuke. Problem is people don't just spontaneously appear and disappear at will.  Not in real life."_

Daisuke walked toward the window and peered out over the campus.  He could see the tiny figures of students scurrying to and fro, but mercifully none of them struck that deep chord of familiarity and longing that even a glimpse of Ken still summoned within Daisuke.  He tightened his fingers around the cel.

"Well I'm sorry, but that's what happened. It's not like I looked away and looked back, I just _blinked._  That takes like, what half a millisecond?  Less than that?  And it wasn't just that he was gone, I could _feel_ that he wasn't there anymore.  Like, there was all this emptiness around me?"

_"Okay, I believe we've officially crossed over from 'mildly paranoid' to 'certifiably insane.' Seriously.  People don't do that sort of thing.  Not typically anyway."_

"Well maybe this is an atypical situation."

_"I was being funny, Daisuke, that wasn't an opening to an argument that we are _not_ having."_

"Well it wasn't that funny, then."

_"Well, look.  You said you wanted to tell someone. So you told me. Feel better now?"_

"Dammit Miyako, what the hell is wrong with you?  This is serious!"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.  When Miyako came back Daisuke could _feel_ the weariness that weighed on her voice.  

_"I'm sorry, Daisuke.  Just—after what happened last time, I don't want to get involved in anything that might—well, anything that might put you in danger."_

"You think I'm in danger?"

_"I don't know.  Where Ken is concerned—yeah, maybe.  It's a possibility you'd do well to consider.  I don't want you getting hurt."_

"It was Ken.  He was here.  I saw him."

There was a shorter pause, and when Miayko spoke again her voice was low.

_"It was Ken, or it was something that _looked_ like Ken.  Be careful Daisuke.  I mean it."_

**

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, breathing lightly, feeling his chest rise and fall.

"Not gonna get better then," he said.

_It will. It can._

"Where were you?"

_I'm sorry.  I didn't know._

"Were you busy?"

_Not really.  It's my fault.  I'm sorry I left you alone for so long._

Will they come back?"

_I don't know.  Maybe.  I don't have any control over those kinds of things._

Ken propped himself up on his elbow.

"Why not?"

_Those rules aren't for me to make.  You know that._

"I don't know anything anymore."

_Well you know it because I'm telling you.  I don't make up those rules._

"Well what should we do?"

_I don't know.  But I've been thinking about it.  I don't think this is the place for you._

He sat up all the way and stared at the empty walls.  He massaged his temples.  "Can't you be where I can see you?"

_Soon.__  Maybe.  But I don't know if it's good for you._

"I want to see you."

_Later.__  Maybe.  If I can make it work._

"Are you alive?"

There was a quiet chuckle.

_Well that's a matter of opinion, isn't it?_

"I can see you," Ken said, "But there's all these dead animals, I can see their eyes—'"

_Ken!  Don't think about that.  I'll try harder.­_

"It's not—"

_Ken get up._

He got up.  

"I used to bleed a lot," he said conversationally.  There'd been a lot of blood in those days.  "I remember, before Dad left. And his head had a hole in it and you could watch the blood come pouring out sometimes. I got in trouble at dinner for staring."

_Ken._

"I'm still—" but he couldn't remember what he'd been saying and he stared at his hands, looking for memories.   "Um…"

_We can make this work.  I think.  But I need you._

"Okay."  He stared at his hands.  "I see it…"

_There is going to be something like light, soon. Do you want to see that?_

"No."

He heard the walls laugh, and in spite of himself he smiled too, though he didn't know why.  "I guess I could go for that," he amended.

_Remember fireworks?_

"Yeah."

_Maybe sake.__ You remember that?_

"I'm not allowed to have sake.  Mama says—"

_Shush.  Mama isn't here now._

"I know.  I'm sorry."

_She's not going to punish you.  No-one's going to know._

"What's going on?"

_Come by the wall._

He went.

_Put your hand on the wall._

He cautiously rested his fingertips on the cool paint and then, slowly, opened his hand and pressed his palm down.   He shivered.

"Cold…" he whispered.

_No-one's here now.  No one can make it better._

He swallowed.  "Why…?"

_They won't make noises.  Do you hear them?_

He shook his head.  "I don't hear anything."

_There.  That's okay then. _

Under his hand the wall flickered and Ken jerked back, but the flickering died away as quickly as it had come.  He spun around.

"Why?  Why? Don't do that to me, please don't—"

_I know what I'm doing. Ken, you have to trust me._

"Can't—"

_Reach up.  Reach out._

"But they're—" He looked around furtively; he could hear hunger whispering behind him.  "They don't love me."

_Trying.__  I'm trying hard, Ken.  The wall. Don't forget it._

He looked back. It flickered white and hissed static, a black line snaking away, jumping and sparking like grounded electricity to the corner, where it was swallowed by the dark shadows.  The corner of the world.

"I see it."

_Reach out, Ken.  Or they'll find you here._

He looked back, over his shoulder.  He could hear them already, whispering and spitting, sparks and bile and death.  And saying _bad, bad_.  

"Okay.  Okay."  He looked back at the wall and reached out, one pale hand twitching, then both hands, brought them together, pressed them against the cold surface.  He could feel the surface but somewhere above it was the shaking and the soft world.  He shut his eyes and his lips parted.

_Now come on.  Hurry.  Before it's too late._

_"Too late.__ Already."_

He squeezed his eyes tighter until lights burst in the darkness. "Make it stop, make them stop, please…"

_"You're coming home, going home, no don't let him go can't be going now."_

_Ken, open your eyes._

"Nn—" He pressed his hands flat on the wall but squeezed his eyes tighter, leaning forward, curling ino n himself.  "Can't, I said, don't make them—"

_"Not getting out now, not here, not now."_

"They won't let me."

_Ken, open your eyes!_

"I can't," he shook his head, whipping his hair back and forth, "I won't, I won't I can't."

_You have to!  Ken!_

_"Ken!"_ mocking.  _"Ken Ken Ken-chan come home come home come come come."_

_Ken open your eyes!_

He curled up, legs buckling, sliding down.  He whimpered.

_"Whisper and bleed."_

"Ken open your eyes!"

His eyes flew wide.  He stared up.  And the wall—

was gone.

Gone.

He fell, forward, into brilliance, and strong arms caught him and he was hanging in the air and he looked down and he could see the city far below.

"It's okay, Ken," the Kaiser said quietly.  "It's okay.  I've got you."


	11. Yami no kaze

There's a gap in between

There's a gap where we meet

Where I end & you begin

And I'm sorry for us

The dinosaurs roam the earth

The sky turns green

Where I end & you begin

I am up in the clouds

I am up in the clouds

And I can't

    & I can't come down

I can watch but

Not take part

Where I end & where you start

Where you you left me alone

You left me alone.

X will mark the place

Like parting the waves

Like a house falling into the 

     sea

_I will eat you all alive_

_And there'll be no more lies_

--Radiohead (_The sky is falling in)_

____________________________________________________________

(Yami~11)

Yami no kaze

He sat on the edge of the wall and stared across the campus.

It fascinated him, still, the way half the campus existed on a completely different level than the rest.  Miyako had tried to turn it into some sort of metaphor for the human condition at one point, but Daisuke had forgotten most of what she'd said, beyond the assertion that distance and time changed the texture of reality and experience, though not the core of that reality.

_"Our perceptions change,"_ she'd said,  _"See, in the time it would take me to walk all the way to the stairs and down to the lower level, then across to the med library, the air would have changed, and the way the sun feels on my skin, my heart rate, breath, perspiration,.  By the time I get where I'm going, my whole experience of the world has changed._

Daisuke hadn't known how to respond to that.  He still didn't, and he wasn't sure he completely understood Miyako's meaning.  But he stared out over the distance and thought about the words, and then, when he heard footsteps behind him, he thought about the idea.

"I don't really get it," he said without looking up when Miyako came to stand beside him.  "It still doesn't make much sense to me."

"What doesn't?" Miyako asked as she flopped down beside him and dangled her long legs below the wall.

"What you said.  About distance, and time."

"Mm."  Miyako leaned back, arms straight, and squinted at the horizon.  "I don't remember what I said."

"I guess it doesn't matter."

"No.  No, it probably doesn't."  Miyako shot him an oblique glance, then said, almost off-handedly, "Have you talked to Ken lately?"

Daisuke looked sharply at the girl, then shook his head.

"Of course not.  I don't know what the hell is going on these days."

"I'm starting to think that's the way of the world, Daisuke.  Try not to let it bother you too much."

Daisuke looked down, between his feet to the ground far below.  "I wonder what it was that I saw,"  he said.

Beside him Miyako shifted.  "Maybe it wasn't anything," she responded, in the tone of one who desperately wished that the statement were true, and knew that it was not.  "Maybe a phantom, a memory.  A dream, given flesh."

"Maybe."  Daisuke's voice was noncommittal.

"But there's so much about the Digital World we still don't know. And Ken. If he's ill—"

"Yeah."

"Mentally, I mean…what happens to someone so closely connected with that world when they start to… well, when they start to lose their mind?  Does the connection exacerbate it?  Is it possible?"

"I don't know what's wrong with Ken, Miyako."

"Well, what happened when you saw him at home?  What did he say to you?"

Daisuke took his time in answering.  He kicked his heels against the brick and listened to the dull hollow thudding that it made.

Finally he cleared his throat and looked up.

"He thought I was Takeru," he said, meeting Miyako's eyes.  The girl blinked at him, then turned her gaze away.

"He…"

"He didn't even know it was me.  He saw something that wasn't there, he saw what he wanted to see."

_Takeru.__  Don't tell Daisuke._

He bit his lip.

"Or," Miyako said in a low voice, "He saw the reality I'd imprinted on you."

"What do you…Oh.  Oh!  God, I didn't even think about that."

Miyako was shaking her head, though not, apparently, at anything Daisuke had said.  

"God," she muttered, "I'm such an idiot.  Why didn't I see it before—all those years ago…I could have _done_ something—"

"It's not your fault, Miyako.  We don't even know if this has anything to do with the Digital World.  And anyway—"

"Daisuke, everything that's happened in our lives that's ever been painful or difficult is linked, in one way or another, to that place."

"But this could still be something organic or chemical."

"It could be…or it could be both, something rooted in reality and connected to the World.  I mean, he could really be sick, and the Digital World and his connection to it could just be making it worse."

"Mm.  Well, it's certainly a possibility.  I wonder if his mother has thought about this."

"Mrs. Ichijouji…God.   That poor woman."

"She won't give me any information either.  I don't know what's happened with Ken at all."

Miyako chewed on her lip. Daisuke glanced at her, then away, in the distance again.  He thought about the medical library, and how long it would take him to walk there, and how he might feel by the time he reached its doors.  

He thought about difference, and change.

"You know," Miyako said quietly, slowly, "There is one thing that we could try, to find out what's going on with Ken."

"Oh?"  Daisuke turned his head. "What's that?"

"You could go back to his apartment.  Through the gate."

"But…"  he remembered the bright hard lights of the dying computer, and shook his head, "Ken destroyed his computer.  We couldn't get to him that way."

"Well…" Miyako paused, then said, "Well, but the gate is linked to Ken, isn't it?  So ideally you should be able to locate him no matter what. Even if there's no gate available. "

"I might be able to find him, but I won't be able to get through."

"Hmmm."  Miyako sank back and drummer her fingers in the grass behind her. "Are you sure Ken's is the only computer in the apartment?"

Daisuke shook his head. "No.  I suppose there could be another one…"

"Well, maybe yes, maybe no.  But it might be worth a shot. You know, if it works."

"Ah, a little B and E for our afternoon recreation?"

Miyako grinned at him.  "Nice to see you haven't lost your sense of humor completely," she said.

Daisuke snorted.  "I never lost my sense of humor.  You have no idea of my capacity for irreverence, you naïve fool."

"Yeah, well…don't you ever think that if Ken hadn't walked into our lives, things would be a whole lot easier?"

Daisuke smiled, but he could feel the sadness in the expression.  "A little, yeah. Sometimes. But I don't think about it for very long."

**

"Here I am, then," he said quietly to the empty air, "Why doesn't it work anymore?"

He could hear the trains, rushing through the air in all their passion and vengeance, angels on the earth beating wings and metal and heartache.  He shivered and wrapped his arms tighter around himself.

"But you left me.  You left me."

_I had to.  I didn't want to._

"It doesn't mean it works for me."

_If you keep talking to the air, people will notice you._

"It's not better this way."  He glanced around furtively.  The trees bowed and nodded their heads in the breeze and licked at the sky, flames of green.  He could see bodies moving farther away, but they were hungry in the absent brilliance.

"You and I.  It should have been."

_Come on, Ken._  The air in front of him wavered,  haze on a desert, and the Kaiser's form materialized briefly, stretching out his hand.  Ken felt his heart clench a fist in his chest.  He leapt forward, reaching out, but there was nothing there.

_Come with me. Follow me._

"I can't…"  He shook his head, pressed his hands to the sides of his head.  "I'm…not here, shouldn't have been."

_Have to be.  Ken.  Listen._

"I'm gonna die."

_No.  You're not._

"Whisper.  Breathe."

_Ken!_  

The noise shrieked through his awareness, briefly, lighting sparks and fires along the horizon, along encampments and battle lines.  His head jerked up, his eyes widened.  He flinched and his lips parted in a half-moan.

_Come on._

"No…" he moved forward, awkwardly, forgetting how with each step.  Only don't, don't, no-one whispering and words word words…

He could hear the angels, their wings like the clash of armor on the hard hard earth.

**

_"No…" he stared at them, and stood up.  Slowly, gracelessly.  He could feel his mouth working but there was suddenly no sound.  No air, there was no air in the room.  He couldn't breathe and his heart wasn't working; he was suffocating…"_

_"Ken—"_

_"No!  Oh god, no—you can't, not now, you can't—"_

_"I'm sorry, Ken, sweetie…" his mother looked at him with pleading eyes and he could hear the unspoken words there.  _Please, Ken, don't make it any worse.__

_Onegai__…_

_"I can't…" he could feel his lips tremble._

_"Ken, you know if there were any other way—" His father was trying to keep his voice level but Ken could hear the irritation, the impatience there.__  Because Ken was supposed to be an adult.  He should be able to handle something like this without throwing a tantrum like a little boy. "Ken!  Would you sit down?"_

_"No…" he shook his head, "No, I can't…you can't—please.  Don't do this. Don't leave.  Not now…"_

_Now…___

_"Ken, sweetie, you know things have been bad for a while—" his mother got up, tried to approach him, but Ken shook his head wildly and backed up until he ran into the couch, then sank down and held up his arms to shield himself._

_"I know—" It was hard to talk, his lips hurt, they were swollen and numb and his throat was closing off.  He knew.  The fights, at dinner, in the morning, In the middle of the night that woke him up—he knew.  But that didn't make it—"But you can't.  You can't."_

_"We've tried, Ken. It just isn't working anymore."_

_He raised his head.  He was very cold, he could feel ice under the surface of his skin.  Opening up, his head and body like a shell opening wide and lifting him far away from himself. Wings.  He had wings, bright angel-wings and feathers—He inhaled shakily._

_"You coward," he sneered at his father._

_The man sat back sharply, mouth dropping open.  Then he surged to his feet fists clenching at his side, and Ken got up too.  He faced the man and his lips pulled away from his teeth._

You haven't got any wings or beautiful souls…

_"What did you say, Ken?"_

_"Coward," he repeated, "Running away.  God…"_

_"Young man, do not take that tone of voice with me."  His father unclenched his fists and Ken felt a brief sense of disappointment, but he met the man's eyes and he could feel a dark tide and the flashing of wings. _

_"Why not?__  If you leave, then what are you?  To me?  Do you matter anymore?"_

_"I'm your father!" The man's voice climbed a notch in pitch and Ken's glance flicked to his father's hands, which now were clenching and unclenching.  _

_Ken smiled._

_"Do you want to hit me?" He asked conversationally._

_"Ken!"  His mother intervened, suddenly and unexpectedly, stepping between the two and holding up her hands placatingly.  She laid one open palm lightly on Ken's chest. "You need to sit down.  Relax,  Ken."_

_"No."  Ken inhaled deeply, chest rising and falling under his mother's touch, "No, I don't."  and so saying he spun on his heel and walked away, slipped on his shoes and left the apartment.  He could hear his parents calling after him, and he ignored them altogether._

**

"It shouldn't have been you, or me, or things that break into pieces."  He stopped walking and looked around himself.  Lots of skies and broken things, and buildings. There were buildings all around, huge and silent.  But he could feel the sky falling down between the spaces and in spite of himself he inhaled deeply and could feel the glass in his chest.   

"Wasn't better you, me.  Yeah."  His feet hurt from walking and his legs were tired.  He sank down on the side of a fountain and put his head in his hands.

_Not here! Ken, not here!_

He got up, the noise terrible against the soft spaces of his head.  He winced and clapped a hand to his ear but it didn't help at all.

"Not here…" he repeated, "Here not here…"

_Go.  Over there, where they can't see you._

"Okay," he moved toward the shadows, "Okayokayokay.  You love me.  Beautiful.  Love me."

_I love you._

"Better that way then. Like life or being bright and hungry."

_You'd better be careful of the sun, Ken._

"I know."  He moved between the shadows of the buildings and looked up.  "I know.  And the sky and all of you."  He sank down on his heels and rested against the side of a building, putting his head on his knees and his arms over his head.  His long hair fell down around him.

"Love you.  Sweetness.  Aren't you beautiful?"

_Daisuke.__  Don't forget.  Daisuke._

"I don't forget things.  I don't remember things anymore.  But I don't forget."

**

_He didn't know where he was going, only that his legs moved and he followed them. Everything had been bad for days now.  The shadows and the stars, the skies, nothing was the way it should have been.  Nothing worked these days._

_He forgot himself, forgot how to walk, how to move.  He thought maybe they could see him, that he stood out.  Wasn't he a freak? Couldn't they tell?  But he needed to go, to find a place to hide. And nobody was making it okay._

_He moved in spite of himself and everything around, his body like a skeleton.  Like soldiers in the valley, and he could see all their campfires.  His heart shivered in his chest.  He had to go._

_He bought a ticket and climbed aboard the train bound for Odaiba.  He hadn't meant to, and at some point along the way he realized what he was doing.  His hand tightened into a fist against the orange plastic seat and he stared out the window, biting his lip until he could feel the pain._

_"Sorry…." he whispered to the air.  Why had he reacted like that?  His mother had enough worries without him adding to them—his own particular brand of cruelty.  And his father…well, no, he couldn't really feel guilty about that.  But everything was coming apart in pieces.  He could feel it, in the palms of his hands.  Silence, and death._

_He stumbled when he got off the train, and the station was empty.  He wrapped his arms around himself and climbed the stairs and started to walk.  He wondered if people could see him, on the streets, if they could see inside of him.  See his skeleton, his bones and heart, and the cancer and rot inside, the dirt and filth he brought with him, the destruction in every breath he exhaled.  He was almost certain that they could._

_Takeru's__ apartment wasn't far away.  He stopped at a crosswalk and looked both ways, down the long black highway and the white lines, the yellow lines.  He could walk. He could go the whole way—_

_He stopped that train of thought and inhaled sharply.  What was wrong with him?  And no, he didn't have to see Takeru.  He didn't have to tell him…anything._

_"But you love me, don't you?"  He asked the empty air._

_He turned and walked the other way._

**

Daisuke fidgeted from foot to foot, peering over Miyako's shoulder and rubbing his hands together nervously, until the girl spun around in her seat and snapped at him to stand still

"Dammit, this is delicate already!  And you're making my hair stand on end doing that.  I keep thinking you're going to attack me or something. "

"Sorry," Daisuke said, "But didn't you already work through all the protective measures?  Why do you have to do it all again?"

"Because someone's come back and put them all in again after you left."

"_What?"_  Daisuke leaned forward. staring at the screen and the long largely indecipherable code thereon.  His eyes flicked to the visible window Miyako had opened that let him see the gate around Ken's apartment and the forbidding landscape the image presented.

"Daisuke," Miyako said patiently, "If you get in my way like that I can't do any work at all, you know."

"But—I don't get it.  Who's responsible for this?"

"Who know?  Daisuke, who cares?  Right now all that matters is getting them down, you can worry about the whys and wherefores later, alright?  Now shoo." And so saying she shoved him away and leaned back over her keyboard.

Daisuke pouted, but the effect was wasted on the dark-haired girl, now bent over the desk and oblivious to all external stimuli. Daisuke frowned and turned away, staring out the window at the sun-washed campus, then to the bunks shoved against the wall.

He got down on his knees and rooted under his bunk, and after a moment his fingers came to rest on something hard and cold and square.  He drew the box out from under the bed and opened it, and pulled out a handful of photographs.

_Do you still have all those pictures?  Daisuke?_

"No," he said quietly.  

Hm?"  Miyako said without raising her head.  "You say something?"

"No.  No.  Nothing."  Daisuke slid the glossy photos apart and spread them out on the floor. Ken. Always Ken.  Beautiful and pale and sad and utterly unreachable.  

_Didn't you love him? Didn't you love him?_

He traced the edge of one photo, the last he'd taken.  Even then things had been getting worse, he knew now.  Ken had been slipping away and he hadn't even realized it.  In the picture, with his head framed by stars and darkness, Ken's gaze had been detached, his skin so pale as to be almost translucent.  He'd been eerie, unearthly, and Daisuke simply hadn't seen.  Or, he'd seen only what he'd wanted to see.  Not the fever that had begun to rage behind those liquid, distant eyes, not the conflagration that would devour the mind of the one person he'd ever thought he'd loved.

He'd thought he loved Ken.  Now he wasn't so sure.

"Daisuke…"  Miyako had come to stand behind him, he realized.  He looked up, then dropped his gaze back to the last photo.

"I didn't even know.  He needed my help—he needed me, Miyako, and all I thought about was myself."

"You couldn't have known…"

"He was.." Daisuke choked off,  "He was losing his mind and I _didn't know_.  How could I not have known?  Miyako, it's impossible!  I'm a horrible person."

"You're not.  You couldn't have known."

"I could have.  He wasn't right.  For days.  He wasn't right, and all I wanted was him.  Or, not him, but what I wanted him to be.  Otherwise I would have seen it clearly.  Everything that happened—I could have done something. Stopped it from happening.  If I'd only seen what was really there."

"We can't see the truth, Daisuke.  Never.  Not until it's too late.  We're blind to the world, we only see what we want to see."

Daisuke buried his face in his hands.  He felt Miyako kneel beside him and rest a hand on his shoulder.

"It's ready," she said quietly, in the darkness, "If you're up to it, you can go."

**

_The door opened, and Daisuke stared at him._

_"I thought…" he trailed off and met Ken's eyes, then looked away.  "I thought you said you weren't coming back."_

_"I wasn't."  Ken paused and looked down at Daisuke, tilting his head and letting his hair slip smoothly to one side.  "I wasn't.  But I—I…"_

_Daisuke looked up. His mouth opened, wordlessly, and he shook his head. _

_"You shouldn't. We…no, it's not fair.  And you don't…you don't—"_

_"You love me, don't you?" Ken asked suddenly.  Daisuke's eyes widened.  But there was nothing for him to say.  Ken already knew the answer._

_"Can I come in? Daisuke?"_

_The brown-haired boy dropped his eyes and stepped back.  Ken slipped inside and shut the door._


	12. Yami no tabi

_And when I see you, I really see you upside down  
But my brain knows better, it picks you up and turns you around  
If you feel discouraged when there's a lack of color here  
Please don't worry lover, it's really bursting at the seams  
from absorbing everything  
The spectrum's A-Z  
This is fact not fiction for the first time in years_

--Death Cab for Cutie

* * *

(Yami-12) 

Yami no tabi

--

_In the darkness the whole world whispered._

_Ken lay awake, one hand resting lightly on the back of Daisuke's head. Lightly, because he was fighting hard not to twist his fingers into the boy's hair until his dark eyes flew open and he cried aloud. He was fighting hard to maintain a semblance of what was right, what was true, no matter the cost to his own existence._

The world takes pieces of your soul, Ken.

_He squeezed his eyes shut and drew a light, gasping breath. His chest rose and shuddered and fell and carefully he drew his hand away from Daisuke's head._

_"Leave…" he whispered, voice cracking, "Leave me alone…please."_

Oh. Does it hurt?

"Does it hurt?"

_He pulled away from Daisuke's sleeping form, turning his body toward the wall. He risked cracking an eye, just once, but when he saw what the wall was doing he squeezed both eyes shut as tight as he could, like a child trying to hide from something._

What do you think you're doing?

_"Leave me—leave. Leave me alone. Please, pleaseplease—"_

"Shh. It hurts, doesn't it?"

_"I don't want it—"_

But it does hurt?

"It does hurt?"

_"It's all broken," he whispered._

"It's your fault, then."

_"I lied." He opened his eyes then, drawing breath across cold lips. The wall wavered, rolled like the surface of the ocean. Ken swallowed hard against the knot in his throat. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Any of it."_

"He never loved you."

_Ken squeezed his eyes shut. "He loved me."_

No. He lied to you. Ken. You shouldn't have done what you did. He doesn't love you because you never loved him.

_"But it—it was too late! Already…he never loved me. Never loved me."_

Maybe it's not too late.

_Ken sat up, the sheets falling away from his body, skin ivory and bright in the vivid darkness. He searched the small room, eyes flicking from shadows to deeper blackness. The walls would not be still, not be silent, and he fought the urge to press his hands to his eyes, to seek an asylum he wouldn't be able to find._

_"He left me…" Ken began, and trailed off. In the darkness, something stirred. The walls drew back a bit, like curtains billowing in the wind. Ken felt himself adrift, a tiny raft on a rising tide. "He never was mine."_

No. He was mine.

"It didn't belong to you."

_Ken clapped his hands to the sides of his head with an audible sound_._ He shivered._

_"Where are you?" he demanded hoarsely. The darkness surged around him, he could feel it licking the edges of his skin; cold fire. He drew back. Poison, black and hungry. _

_"The night is a curtain," Ken said._

He belongs to me. Let him go.

_"You didn't want him! You didn't—"_

I was in error. Let go, Ken. I want what belongs to me.

"What belongs to you! To me, to us, to everyone everything everywhere…"

_"Shut up," Ken whispered, "Shut up, shut up shut up…"_

I can make it stop, Ken. Do you want it to stop?

_"Yes, please, yes, oh yes please…"_

Then give me what I want.

"Shh no, not yours never was never was."

_"Ohh God…" Ken was rocking back and forth now with his hands twisting into his hair, dark strands falling in front of his face. The blackness around him shifted, as though it were thinking, then silently in a rushing of tides it began to draw back. There was the sound of wind, far away._

Think about it, Ken. I'll ask you again.

_"Again…"_

_The ocean receded, dissolved into the bright night._

_Ken remained sitting up for hours, waiting for the voices to stop._

--

In the brilliance of the storm Ken turned a full circle, bathed in sunlight; water and sunlight. Brilliance filled the intoxicated air and ran in rivulets down his skin, poured off his body and dripped from his fingers, spilled over his veins and splattered on his hair.

"I can hear it," he said to no-one in particular.

_Ken. Are you ready?_

He quirked a smile. "I'll never be ready. Sweetness. It's better."

_Well try harder. It's coming. Aren't you ready?_

"I said to you, I said, I said," he paused, held his hands lightly together and rocked from side to side, "I said I'll never be ready. Also how will I know where to find him?"

_I'll be there. Watching out._

"Well okay then." He looked, then, out from the shadow of the building. The sky was so _warm_, everything was full of light. He could feel the presence, he could sense it in the veins of clattering electricity that ran through the air, spitting and sparking, he could feel it.

"He's there. He's somewhere."

_This will hurt you, Ken._

He paused a bit, then , rested his hand on the wall. Cool. He exhaled. He had a distant memory of breath, sometime long ago. He shivered.

"Will I notice?" he asked.

There was a pause then, and, _No. Not really. Not anymore._

"Will he notice?"

_It's hard to say, Ken._

"Well. Let's go down the river, then."

_Not the river. _

He could feel it. He shut his eyes. The shadows around him weren't real, there was a storm, brighter than the sun. Bright and electric, burning, singing, riding down the wire like a guitar string, humming in sprayed-out vibration. Starting low and rising, a growl of distance.

"How does this work?" he asked, but if there was an answer he couldn't imagine it.

_It doesn't. But you can feel it._

"Yes."

And the hunger. And the sky. And all the surge of the sea, the white spray and the crowd of distance, the taste of salt. His lips had salt on them and all was brightness and warmth and descending apocalypse, the distance that crosses all barriers, the sense of time, of abandonment, of treble. That which burns, rises, obliterates. The opening of all wings, the spread and flush of feathers, blood, skin. (Love) Chaos and wingspan and he shut his eyes. If he stretched out his fingers (which he did) he could feel the electric wire spit at the edges of touch, at the very point of contact like static on his mother's carpet. Bright in colors, yellow, white, screaming in green and silver strings. He inhaled and shuddered and felt hands take hold, briefly, touch his shoulders, flash across his eyes.

_Are you ready?_

_"…ready…"_

"No. Oh no."

_Be ready._

His body was moving side to side, swaying while his feet were locked in place. His hands hung limp from the ends of his arms and only in some other time, some other world was he reaching out, stretching forward, moving on.

_Let's go._

_"…go…"_

He opened his eyes without opening his eyes. The world opened up and all was bright light. The crash of steel, of hungry metal, of electricity and sound. He could hear the noise, the hunger, the hum. He shivered in the passage of the storm and swayed back a step, nearly bumping in to the body of the Kaiser. Strong hands grasped his arms and held him.

"We have to go, Ken."

His lips worked.

"Can't, I can't…"

"There isn't a _choice!_ We're here now, if we don't go we might _never_ get another chance." The grip on his arms tightened, squeezed, and Ken's lips parted and he cried out wordlessly.

"Here it comes!" The Kaiser said, "Get ready!"

Terrible nighttimes, dark engulfing of stars, of material black and thick, and pouring out the rain. Pouring out the rain. Ken shuddered and swayed back, into the Kaiser and felt himself embraced, and Ken clung to his body and whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut. The sky turned white and the stars hurtled forward. Even with his eyes shut he could see it, a light, burning a hole in his chest. His bones trembled at the approach and suddenly he felt himself grasped more tightly, an increase in pressure in his arms, an anticipation.

"When I say now, we go. Ken? Understand? When I say now!"

But Ken was beyond answering. The approach was a thunder, a storm, an ocean raised above the earth and brought down upon it. It was a mouth that opened wide and when the Kaiser suddenly pushed him, hard, crying "Now!" into the abyssal blackness Ken stumbled forward blindly and it was only the presence of the hand still clutching his wrist in a bone-crushing grip that propelled him forward, through, and into.

Thickness, molasses, honey. Sweet electricity, brightness and sting and sex. Ken gasped, stumbled, and the hand did not release him and Ken fell straight ahead and dropped to his knees, bells ringing in his head. He moaned in the ecstasy of noise, all silver and light, all brightness, and he swung his head blindly from side to side. The hand on his arm grasped lightly at his hand, held on in the distance but Ken heard only the light, the bells spinning, the ringing of rain. He crawled on the floor and someone was laughing, somewhere, but he didn't know where it was coming from and his body was on another plane, far away, consumed in whiteness.

He fell to the ground, and laughed, and tears ran from his eyes and the Kaiser was left standing alone on the electric train, far from human experience.

"What is it?" Daisuke asked, staring in wonder at the monitor.

"It's like a train. An electric train, you know? _Densha_. It'll get you where you're going.

"Why haven't I ever seen it before?"

"I'm not sure you haven't, Daisuke. Everything's a metaphor in the Digital World anyway, you know, and a lot of it is an expression of the electronics of our own world. Or becoming more so, anyway. Once I think the Digital World was more wild, more feral. Anyway that's not important.

"I'm just, uhh, going Ken's apartment, right?"

"Well yeah, but…."

"_But?_ Miyako, I'd like to know what I'm getting into here."

"Well, the gate should be linked to Ken, but it isn't getting me anywhere near to a corresponding terrestrial location of his apartment…so I thought we could bypass the problem and do it this way."

"So you…hacked the space-time continuum?"

Miyako laughed. "Don't be silly. Of course not. It was Koushirou. He set it up a while ago."

"Oh." Daisuke chewed his lip. "Ohh I don't like this Miyako."

"It's a good way around a difficult problem. I've set the system to get you where you're going—the apartment—although if there isn't a gate you won't be able to...get off the train, so to speak. And then it'll just bring you back here and we can try to think of something new."

"A round trip, so to speak."

"More or less. Are you going or not?"

"I especially like the platform setup." Daisuke eyed the monitor one last time, then took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "I'm ready. Get me on that train, Miyako."

"Okay. You might want to close your eyes for this, there might be a bit of a jolt—"

--

_Ken was sitting up nursing a cup of tea when Daisuke padded into the kitchen. The redheaded boy smiled shyly at Ken and moved toward him, and Ken allowed his hand to be gently lifted from where it rested against the warm cup and enfolded in Daisuke's dark hands._

_"What's going to happen now?" Daisuke asked, and Ken, in spite of the ebb and flow of noise that filled the air around him, blinked at the directness of the question. He shook his head and looked down._

_"I don't know," Ken whispered. "I'm sorry…"_

_"Takeru…he'll be angry."_

_"I know."_

_"We should tell him—"_

_Ken raised his head sharply and met Daisuke's eyes. Whatever he saw in Ken's glance must have frightened him, for he stepped back hastily and released Ken's pale hand._

_"No," Ken whispered hoarsely, "We can't say anything."_

_"W-why not?" Daisuke's lip was almost quivering, and in any other situation the look of hurt on his face would have been almost comical. Ken looked away._

_"Not—I mean, we can't tell him yet. Not yet. I just need time to think." He pressed his hands to his skull and drew a deep breath. "Please. Daisuke. Just give me a little time."_

_"All...all right. I can do that." Daisuke looked away, at the cool tiles of the kitchen wall, then moved to the teapot and poured out a cup. He silently withdrew from the kitchen after that, disappearing back into the silent apartment and leaving Ken alone with his thoughts._

_After everything, Ken supposed, there was no punishment suitable for his wickedness. How could there be? He'd betrayed Takeru, the person he professed to love, and fallen into bed with Daisuke...all because of…what? Stress? Emotional weakness? And it wasn't as though he could simply explain it to someone else—Takeru, Daisuke, his mother, some confidante—because none of them could possible or even potentially understand the nature of the noise he was living with now. Why wouldn't the Kaiser leave him alone? Why, after all these years, was he being haunted by an…an _apparition_ of all things, some psychic representation of what was after all nothing but an abstract concept?_

_Abstract. Was he? Did the Kaiser actually exist on some level? Was it all an expression of his subconscious, some sort of hideous Freudian joke h'd conspired to play on himself and the people around him._

_He was sure, he was sure that it was the Kaiser's fault for his deceiving Takeru. And Daisuke. He would only wind up hurting Daisuke._

_He was wicked, he was sinful, he was full of guilt. He ought to run to the balcony right now, scream out his crimes to the sky and God, and throw himself on the azure mercy of emptiness. He could picture it in his head, feel the plummet, the sense of lightness, the bright instant of freedom. His breath caught in his throat and he felt his heart leap in longing and, unfortunately, fear. The desire was there, but his flesh, it seemed, wasn't strong enough. He would have to endure his own weakness a little bit longer._

_He sighed a bit and sipped his tea._

_I'm coming for you._

_  
-- _

Daisuke shivered as the last vestige of the passage between worlds faded from his skin. He hesitantly cracked an eye, then almost unconsciously brushed off his skin and patted off his clothing. Somehow the entire idea of leaving the analog world for the digital one left him feeling more and more unnerved every time he did it.

He glanced around at his surroundings and was surprised to note that he was not, in fact, aboard a train but rather standing on the platform he'd seen on Miyako's monitor. The air was cold and a wind was blowing through the exposed space, beneath the white canopy, and stirring a few fallen leaves over the white-painted concrete. Daisuke turned and watched the leaves skitter across the ground and his eyes flicked to the stairs leading up to what he supposed would be street level. He wondered what would happen if he climbed those stairs—if he'd find himself on some digital street somewhere in the World, or if he'd simply blink out of existence. He considered the latter far more likely.

He fished his digivice out of his pocket and tapped it with a nail.

"Miyako? You there? What am I supposed to do now?"

_"Just be patient, cowboy. The train's on the way, in the meantime you can just sit tight. Or have a drink, if you want one."_

Daisuke glanced at the vending machine. Some hot tea sounded good, actually, but he wasn't even sure if he could safely drink it here in this limbo area.

"Are you sure it's really a vending machine? What if the drinks are just painted on?"

Miyako made a noise suspiciously like an exasperated sigh and said, _"Lord, Daisuke, I don't know. Go over and kick it if you want, see if it bites you or something."_

"What are you getting so pissy about? Jesus, relax already."

_"Train's coming," _Miyako said suddenly, and Daisuke spun away from the object of contention and hurried to the edge of the platform. Overhead the intercom suddenly sounded the three-toned alert and Miyako's voice was suddenly speaking to him from the ceiling.

_Now arriving at track one, ring line to Ken Ichijouji and Limbo station, current destination unknown. Please wait for the train to come to a complete stop before boarding. Thank you._

"No, thank _you,_" Daisuke muttered as he watched the light of the train approach out of the blue sky. He fidgeted for a minute as it drew closer, the sound of its approach turning from a low rattle to a cacophony of metal on metal. A thought suddenly occurred to him.

"Miyako!" He shouted into the digivice, one hand to his ear to drown out the noise."

_"What?"_

"Mi-ya-ko! You won't be able to come on the train with me, will you?"

_"WHAT?"_

"I said YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO COME ON THE TRAIN WITH ME, WILL YOU?" He broke off then in a fit of coughing, but over the noise he distantly heard Miyako agreeing with him, and saying faintly, "sorry, Daisuke."

"I'll be okay," he muttered almost inaudibly as the train squealed to a stop, and after a what seemed a prolonged hush the doors cracked, then opened wide. Daisuke, before he could give himself a chance to talk himself out of it, leapt at the doors, shoving his digivice in his pocket even as he sprang forward.

"OkayMiyakosorryIdidn'thavetimetoaskmorestufftalktoyoulater'bye!" And even as Miyako's protesting voice issued suddenly from his pants pocket, he leapt aboard the train, grabbed a pole and swung around to face the platform just as Miyako's voice was suddenly, ruthlessly, cut off.

The silence resounded for a moment before the doors slid shut and the train started up again. Daisuke heaved a sigh and flopped into the nearest seat, noting the unattractive orange vinyl cover that felt as real as that of any train he'd ever ridden.

"Ring line to Ken, huh?" he asked the empty air. "Guess we'll see."

--

When the doorbell buzzed, barely a moment after her contact with Daisuke vanished, Miyako nearly fell out of her chair in shock. She managed to avoid any undignified pratfalls by grabbing hold of her desk with one hand and fluttering her hand over her heart with the other, a not uncomical gesture of surprise which was completely wasted on her nonsentient computer monitor and empty dorm room. She got up from the desk with only mild grumblings and, one hand still resting over her heart, went to see who was at the door.

Peering through the peephole she suddenly forgot all about her heart and in fact about the appropriate behavior for a young Japanese lady and her mild grumblings became a string of several English-language curse words, all of which she knew the meaning of and all of which, she considered, were far more virulent than any of the more tame options her native tongue afforded her. She had Mimi to thank for the broadening of her vocabulary, and in a more calm state of mind she would later resolve to send the girl a selection of assorted sweets to thank her.

"Son of a bi—" she unlocked the door and cut herself of mid curse as the deadbolt slid back, and when she flung the door open she found the grin she spared her caller was only a little frosty and cracked around the edges. Startled blue eyes looked back at her and she reflected that the door probably wasn't soundproofed. Dammit.

"Ta_ke_ru," she managed in a voice she hoped sounded less hysterical to the blonde standing in her doorway than it did to her own ears. "What are _you_ doing here?"

Takeru coughed politely, one pale hand lifting to cover his lips and, she suspected, to hide a grin of nervousness. It seemed he'd acquired a bit of grace in his months traipsing around the frigid north, to judge by the way he moved his hand and shifted his fingers, and in fact he seemed to have acquired a bit of height as well. His skin, though pale, had a touch of wind burn to it and his cheeks had turned a rosy, rustic pink, while his hair had become even lighter than before, something which Miyako would have previously thought impossible. However, as one whose natural hair color was the sort of thing that usually occurred only on the tropical plants found in Sora's mother's flower shop, she supposed her thoughts on the subject were really sort of irrelevant.

"Sorry?" he asked after a moment and even went so far as to raise his eyebrows, "Was I not supposed to come here?"

"Well, I mean," she fidgeted a bit before stepping back but did not go so far as to invite the man into her apartment, "I thought you were still doing time in the frozen north. When did you get back in town?"

"Just recently," he said, his lips curving slightly at Miyako's mention of the 'frozen north.' "I've been visiting with my brother and—is something wrong?"

Miyako cursed herself mentally for wincing at the mention of Yamato. She shook her head and lied in a way that she hoped was convincing. "No, I'm just surprised you're back is all. Um. Come in!" She hurriedly cleared the doorway and gestured the man into the room. "Sit down! Would you like some tea?"

"Yes, if you don't mind. Tea sounds wonderful." Takeru entered the room, pulling off his scarf and shrugging out of his coat, then draping them both over the room's single chair. He glanced briefly at the screensaver on the monitor—media Miyako hadn't gotten around to changing, a live recording of her favorite Osaka retro-punk band.

"I know these guys," he said absently. Miyako, busy filling the hot water heater, looked up and nodded.

"I've never seen them play but Daisuke gave me their last CD for Christmas—" she said, and broke off, hand flying to her mouth in a panicked parody of Takeru's earlier expression. The blonde man merely smiled, however, and looked out the window.

"How is everyone these days?" he asked mildly, and Miyako hurriedly returned her attention to preparing tea at the little table in the corner of the room. "I heard Koushirou's in jail again?"

"Yeah. Probably—'" she coughed, "Probably for a while this time. Though I can't say I feel too sorry for him."

"No." Takeru looked down, but he was still smiling. "No, you're probably right. How's everyone else?"

"Occupied with school, mostly. No major disasters to report, thankfully, but we haven't had finals this term yet, so we may have to talk Hikari out of slashing her wrists when the scores come back. Again."

Takeru grinned at his shoes. "So I've heard…she seems to take her grades very seriously."

"Oh, so she's been bemoaning her fate to you even over long distance?"

"Occasionally. She says it's just her luck that, out of an entire group of intellectual geniuses she's the only one with a merely average IQ."

"Sometimes I feel pretty average myself," Miyako said absently as she poured hot water into the pot and grabbed two cups. "Tea, Takeru."

"Thank you." Takeru settled himself comfortably on the floor in front of the table and accepted the proffered mug. He inhaled the steam and looked out the window again, where the sun was burning soft and white.

"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" he said.

--

"And we go," The Kaiser said. "Ken, get up."

He'd lain still on the floor for a long time now, and when he raised his head and his hair fell away from his eyes the light shining into the car was very bright, shining in his eyes and filling the whole world. Sitting up fully he looked around himself in amazement, absently lifting one hand to tuck his hair back behind his ear.

They were on a train, of sorts; Ken could feel the hard ridged metal floor beneath him, and the car swayed from side to side on the tracks as they rushed forward into an impossible blue. The Kaiser was sitting a few feet away on an ugly vinyl seat, and he had his cape wrapped around his body and his legs drawn up and crossed beneath its folds.

After some difficulty Ken got to his feet and crossed to the nearest window. Peering out, he saw clouds rushing by and what seemed to be a faint impression of grass, though downy and white as feathers. The sun was low on the horizon but the light was that of a summer afternoon, with no hint of the sweet fading of twilight.

"It's not autumn," he said softly. Behind him he heard the Kaiser chuckle.

"Come sit beside me," The Kaiser said, and Ken stepped back from the window, crossed the rocking floor, and settled himself beside the body of one who shared his face. The Kaiser extended a hand from beneath the darkness of his cape and took Ken's in his own. His skin was cold and Ken's, too, was losing the human warmth he'd taken for granted all those years. He shut his eyes and the train rocked from side to side, and he remembered being small.

"Do you remember…?" he asked quietly. He felt the Kaiser shift beside him, the hand squeezing lightly.

"Remember what, Ken?"

"Being young. Being…small. When there was still hope for me. For us. Christmas…"

"No," The Kaiser said softly, "I don't remember."

"The lights…there were lights, and everyone laughed. And Daisuke let me smile. For the first time, and everything was okay for a little while…"

"It's strange," the Kaiser said. "All that violence...there was so much of it."

Ken rested a hand lightly over his heart. "Here. I felt it. So much pain. Like screaming in the dark. It never really stopped."

"I do remember that."

"You never really left me, did you?"

"It's a part of…the light, the shining. Hunger…these things are a way of life, Ken."

"I never really wanted to be alone. I can remember the ocean."

"I remember…feeling alone." The Kaiser moved again, sliding closer to Ken until they brushed against one another. Ken sighed, and let the Kaiser's grip on his hand tighten.

"I remember the hate," Ken said. "All the things that aren't real, the ocean. The darkness. I remember hating so much. Being so angry."

"Me too," the Kaiser said.

"It was all I had."

"Sometimes that's all there is."

They fell silent for a while then, and the train rushed forward into light, bright light. Ken was thinking that something had changed inside of himself. He wondered about the body beside him, who was very real and yet, somehow, who seemed less tangible than he had in years. Ken looked down at the pale hand twined in his own and wondered that it wasn't fading, like crystal, like glass. He could feel the sun off in the distance, perpetually suspended above the horizon, and Ken realized that they were rushing toward it, through streams of light. He smiled a bit.

"The air is clear, here," he told the Kaiser, who nodded.

--

He was rushing forward into a light. He could see the sun, off some distance away, toward the horizon, but the light was all wrong. It jarred his earthly senses, made him expect a different reality when he looked out the window than what he saw.

Daisuke drew back from the glass. He wondered how long the trip to Ken's place would take, assuming that he would actually make it there, and wished suddenly for a magazine or something else to distract himself. Since there was no such thing available, though, he wandered the length of the car, opened and shut the door, and moved into the next car. He did this repeatedly, several times, until he began to wonder if there was any end to the train at all or if it simply continued indefinitely. And if that was the case, why was it moving?

He wondered if, like the mythical snake he'd heard Miyako talk about (Ouro-something?), the head and tail of the train were fused together and it simply encircled the Digital realm. He imagined a train the radius of the globe, then thought about the number of cars that would entail and the amount of friction each car would endure in the constant race from place to place and time to time, and his mind boggled.

"It's amazing it doesn't tear itself apart," he muttered as he slipped through another door. Not every car had identical seat covers; some were orange, like the ones he'd seen initially after boarding, some were a hideous green, others white, or grey, or even blue. He guessed they were representative of various trains in the real world, which was sort of amazing if he thought about it—why was everything in the Digital World a mirror of the real? It was as though it were making a deliberate attempt to make trespassing humans feel at home in an alien environment.

"Yet it'll outlive all of us…" he murmured. He paced the length of the new car and reached for the door, but something forestalled him. His hand paused midway to the handle and drew back. Peering through the window, he saw that the car ahead of him was, unaccountably, dark.

"On the other hand," Daisuke said quietly, "Maybe we only see what we want to see."

He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, reached out blindly and pushed the door open. Stepping through, into the space between the cars, he was suddenly sharply aware of the rocking of the train, the side-to-side motion that was always with him but which he tended not to notice due to habit and familiarity. He felt the way his body shifted to accommodate the motion, finding somehow the center of a gravity that extended all the way down to the center of the planet, the final precise point where mass began and ended.

It was, after all, a very simple thing.

When he opened his eyes he felt how truly deep the darkness was. He reached up blindly and passed his hands over the glass window, the door, and fumbled blindly for the latch. He wondered if, outside, the sun was still shining or even if the car was somehow lighted and he simply couldn't see it for himself.

When he slid the door open to the next car he heard a voice speaking in the darkness.

_"Do you know what the word _offing_ means?" someone was asking, and after a pause someone, who sounded very much like the first speaker, said,_

_"No. No I don't."_

_"It means: the distant part of the sea that is visible from the shore."_

_"I didn't know that."_

Daisuke drew a sharp breath. It wasn't as though he couldn't recognize the voice; he would have known it anywhere.

"K-Ken?" he asked the darkness, and at that moment the light erupted, bursting out from the windows and flooding his eyes. He cried out and clapped his hands over his eyes, doubling up with the pain as spots danced behind his eyelids.

"Something's in the offing," a voice said beside him, and he felt gentle hands rest on his shoulders. Daisuke shuddered and drew back, then straightened as best he could and opened his eyes. In the glaring brightness he just made out a slim figure standing directly in his line of sight, dark hair bright with reflected radiance.

"Hullo Daisuke," Ken said, and added, "It seems that all trains are one train after all."

* * *

_A/N: Half the challenge, and therefore the fun, of writing a fic for me is the way I do it—I have a rule that I never, ever go back and edit previous chapters unless its to correct a typo or something. That is, I never go back and try to retroactively make things make sense—I have to try to clean it all up at the end, which is what I'm doing now. Which is why I've put off so long doing these last couple chapters—it's quite taxing._

_I did the same thing with Restraint and The Incorruptible and still managed to pull it off, so I'm hoping I can do something similar here. Though it really remains to be seen._

_Thanks to anyone who has stuck with the story this long—many apologies! bowbow I'm sorry for keeping you waiting!_

_-- _

_Also what is up with this incredibly irritating upload interface? I'm very, very sorry to everyone reading for all the weird ellipses which I don't have tim to go through and change, and all the other stuff which doesn't match up with previous chapters--this interface is evil and annoying._

_I think when the story is finished I'll post it at deviantart as a single piece so I can display it how it should be instead of in this weird format. _


	13. yami no tenshi

_when the last days come  
we shall see visions  
more vivid than sunsets  
brighter than stars  
we will recognize each other  
and see ourselves for the first time  
the way we really are_

_  
--Mountain Goats_

_

* * *

_

(Yami13)

(casting nets in the rain)

Yami no Tenshi

_And_…

The color of the sky, the taste of bitter apples. Silver as the rain that falls are the nets of forgotten fishermen, like fingers and hands. A ripple, a shining light, a brilliance and a spreading thread of silver and refraction. The taste, at the heart, in the deepest part of the sky where the world can no longer be seen, the bitterest acid. The sweetness of dreams, in the space behind the skull, in the eye that shifts, in the falling upward.

_(plunge…)_

Those who are lost, who come now beyond even darkness and the idea of darkness, and the sky, the sky

_(Takeru, the sky)_

or then again the sea.

--

"Ken."

_Oh, my God._

And Daisuke stared. Ken smiled at him, in the way of angels, without remorse. His eyes were bright in the radiance, and he shone, his hair burning.

Burning. Everything was burning.

_(Takeru, the sky…)_

"Hello," Ken said again, and his smile broadened. Daisuke sat up.

"My God…," he breathed. "You—you know me?" he asked tremulously. "You recognize me?"

"I know you," Ken confirmed. "I would know you anywhere."

Daisuke looked up. "But that's impossible," he said.

From the nearest seat the Kaiser regarded him impassively, eyes invisible behind blind lenses. Daisuke inhaled sharply and let the breath out slowly, and shifted where he sat on the ridged metal floor. He looked back at Ken, in the midst of his fiery halo, and swallowed.

"You'd better get off the floor," Ken said. Daisuke nodded dumbly and stood, swaying slightly with the rocking of the train car. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, the Kaiser shift slightly on the seat. He turned his head, looked out the window. Downy white grass swept past and the light streamed over and away, pouring out like water over some great distance. Perhaps they were beneath the sea, far below on the bottom of the ocean where the pressure was so great that it squeezed even darkness into light. Perhaps then even Ken's madness had become some kind of delicate sanity.

"It's going to be okay," Ken told him gently.

Daisuke pursed his lips and frowned. "What's _he_ doing here?" he demanded sharply, waving a hand at the Kaiser, still only seeing him from the corner of his eye. Ken shrugged.

"It's a kind of memory," he said mildly. "You know? The way the stars shine, or the color…the color of the stars over the sea. Anyway why shouldn't he be here?"

Daisuke looked down. He had no answer. He'd never really had an answer. Even when he'd thought Ken was his, they'd both been very far apart.

"I thought," he began, and Ken looked at him expectantly. "I thought that it might be different."

"Different how?" Ken asked, and the train rocked suddenly and they both were silent, waiting for the instability to pass. And Daisuke said, "You thought that I was someone else."

At this there was the creak of vinyl and Daisuke realized the Kaiser had sat up sharply. Ken shot him a look, past Daisuke's line of sight.

"Did I?" he asked.

"You called me Takeru."

Ken paused. He licked his lips and Daisuke saw briefly through the beatific calm, to the place inside where stars were still burning in the sky in terrible conflagration. "I made a mistake," was all the pale boy said. Daisuke shook his head.

"No," he said flatly. "No, I don't think you did."

Ken looked at him. "Daisuke! How can you— "

"But it's true, isn't it? You were right all along. It wasn't me you were waiting for."

Ken looked helplessly from Daisuke to the Kaiser. Daisuke held his breath. A full minute passed and Ken said nothing, and in the growing silence Daisuke became aware of a faint perfume, the smell of the sea and distant jungles. But he thought he might have imagined it.

Without warning, suddenly, the Kaiser spoke. His voice was like Ken's, but also it was like oil on the sea, a slick polluting balm, a quiet horror.

"You mustn't blame Ken," the Kaiser said. "You mustn't. He wasn't himself. My fault, certainly. But you mustn't blame him this time, Daisuke. Not this time."

He turned his head, slowly, toward the window and the bright light and the colorless grass, and the dark silhouette poised in front of it. The Kaiser lifted one gloved hand, waved it vaguely in their direction. "These things happen," he said.

Daisuke shook his head and moved away, shifting with the rocking of the train. He fought the urge, the sense of tension, the desire to run, and cast about the train for any small distraction. Ken remained standing, sanguine, and Daisuke gave up finally and sat down heavily in another seat, across from the Kaiser. He tried not to look directly at the apparition.

"I saw you," the Kaiser said quietly, "I know that you were there."

Ken looked from one to the other, unperturbed.

"I saw you," the Kaiser repeated. "I heard your voice over the net."

Daisuke ground his teeth.

_I heard your voice over the net._

"Yeah," Daisuke said quietly, "I thought that it was you."

"I kept waiting for something to happen," Ken broke in, with eerie eagerness. "But nothing ever did. Only I thought things might get better if, you know, if I was patient. I thought—"

"Ken," Daisuke said quietly, "Please. Stop."

Ken was quiet. After a moment he came to stand beside Daisuke, then lowered himself into the seat. Daisuke turned his head. Ken reached down and (gently, gently) took Daisuke's hand, wrapped his pale fingers around Daisuke's, and rested his other hand over top.

(Gently…

_shhh_)

"Daisuke…"

"Where are we going?" Daisuke asked quietly, staring at their entwined fingers, trying not to see. But it was hard. Oh, it was hard.

Ken didn't answer, but looked up, across the way, at the darkness sitting there. At the edge of his vision Daisuke saw the dark head shake. Softly the Kaiser said,

"Sobre tu cementerio sin paredes

donde los marineros se extravían,

mientras la lluvia de muerte cae,

vienes volando."

Ken made a small sound; Daisuke looked sharply at him as the pale boy leaned forward, free hand flitting, coming to press against the side of his head. His other hand squeezed Daisuke's tighter, tighter, until it hurt, and Ken's hair fell across his face. Ken moaned. Daisuke lifted a hand, cautiously, started to reach out, but stopped and looked at the Kaiser.

"The poem is a dedication," The Kaiser said quietly. "A friend of Neruda's, you see. A friend, a close friend." He paused, then said, softer still, "He met his death by drowning."

Daisuke looked at Ken again, still bent over, and cautiously lifted his free hand, but didn't touch. He didn't touch.

--

"These things are a way of life," Takeru said. Miyako looked at him.

"What?"

"Just something Ken said to me, once…" the blonde boy trailed off and stared out the window, and missed Miyako's flinch at the mention of Ken.

"What does it mean?" she asked in spite of herself. She hated to continue this reverie, but…

Takeru shrugged. "Who knows? He was always saying things like that. But that…he said that to me late, towards the end—" He paused. "Toward the end. Before it all went bad."

Miyako bit her lip. Her close friendship with Daisuke had precluded any real discussion with Takeru or even Yamato about the details of the relationship, and about any of the events that had preceded Ken's unexpected switching to Daisuke. She'd tried to remain neutral on the subject but felt that in some way she'd betrayed Takeru, never taking the time even to listen to his story.

"It must have been very difficult," she offered, feeling this was a pretty lame statement, and cold as well.

Takeru looked at her. "It was hard," he said. "Things were bad. Ken…he wasn't himself for a long time. I waited. I tried, I really did. I wanted to make it right for him…somehow. But nothing I did or said mattered, or made a difference. It was just…he was slipping from me all the time and I couldn't get back the person I'd…the one who I loved. He was gone, so fast," Takeru snapped his fingers, "Just like that."

Miyako looked down, shifting slightly. She bit her lip.

"I'm sorry," she offered. "I should have been there…"

Takeru shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have done anything anyway." He looked at her, directly, blue eyes piercing. "How is Ken, these days?"

Miyako paused. She swallowed.

"He's…" she trailed off. It was her turn to look away this time. "Not well. He's—oh, Takeru, I don't know. No one knows. We can't find out, his mother won't tell us anything. Just that he's…he's sick, Takeru. Very sick."

There was silence after that. Takeru sipped at his tea and Miyako tried not to look too uncomfortable. Finally she asked, "What happened, exactly?"

Takeru looked at her. "What do you mean?"

Miyako looked down. "I never heard…how it happened. Only that somehow Ken and Daisuke…that they…"she trailed off and Takeru, after a moment, set his teacup down. The noise was sharp and almost painful.

"A lot happened," Takeru told her. "It—it was bad. When Ken found out about his parents, that they were splitting up…I think that was really the beginning of the end. It was just too much and he was already so fragile. When I found out…he ran to Daisuke, you know. I think it was always his first response…even when we were first together I knew. I was always living in Daisuke's shadow. 'Daisuke wouldn't do this' or 'Daisuke wouldn't ask me that.' It was hopeless, and I think we both knew it, on some level. The idea…the idea that we could even have been together…I don't know. Childish craziness, maybe. Nothing more. It was hopeless all along."

"Oh Takeru…"

"But when I found out…I was upset. I think that's understandable. We fought. I tried to be understanding but Ken…Ken was unreasonable. And if I'd had the brains to see it I'd have seen the hole opening up inside him. Something had been torn out of him, in the pain, and in the guilt he suffered for going to Daisuke like that…but I didn't see. And I—I left. I had to get away, and I did just that."

Miyako said nothing. After a moment she silently poured more tea for Takeru, then sat back.

"While I was gone I thought, a lot. So it seemed only natural when the opportunity to go to Hokkaido arose—I took it. I just couldn't be around…well, around any of this. Even anywhere in Tokyo. It was simply too much. And I was a lot younger then, too." He looked up at her. "I assumed that Ken and Daisuke became…that they were together. But I never asked anyone and didn't want to really know."

"They didn't—" Miyako paused at Takeru's raised eyebrow, took a deep breath and plunged on. "They didn't. At first, I mean, they tried. They did. They took a trip together one summer…but things degenerated rapidly. So fast. Ken just…he fell apart. We all watched it happen. We thought he might—he was dangerous. To himself. To everyone. His Mom yanked him out of school and we didn't really see him or hear from him after that. Ken's father moved to England, you know—"

"Really?" Takeru quirked an eyebrow.

"And then for months and months no-one heard a word. We almost forgot about him. We had our own lives to live, after all."

"True." Takeru turned the cup around in his hands and stared into the pale liquid. Eventually he looked up. "So, you haven't heard anything lately then?"

"Well…" Miyako looked down. She shook her head, hair swinging from side to side. She could almost _feel_ Takeru's questioning look.

"Miyako?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "Whatever's happening now…you don't want to get involved in it, Takeru. It's not going to end well. I can tell…I can feel it. It's bad and getting worse all the time."

Takeru paused, then said, "Is Daisuke involved?"

Miyako looked up.

"I saw him," Takeru told her. "On the platform. Waiting for the train. I saw him go by."

Miyako blinked. "But that's—no, that can't be right."

"Why not?" Takeru leaned forward; there was an eager light in his eyes.

"It's—Takeru, he was in the Digital World."

Takeru stared at her. Whatever he was thinking, Miyako couldn't tell.

--

"Where are we going?" Daisuke asked again. Ken was bent nearly double, hair hanging down bright and shining, hand still gripping Daisuke's like a vise. Daisuke looked to the Kaiser, a challenge on his face.

"Don't know." The apparition (because Daisuke refused to believe it was real) shook his head. And he said, "I don't know and I can't say. Someplace far away, maybe. I think. Somewhere far from here."

_But it's warm and you can see the stars. Not like Tokyo. _

"_Let's go outside,_

"Ken," Daisuke whispered. The pale boy raised his head, with difficulty.

"Ken," Daisuke said again. "Let's go outside."

* * *


	14. yami no owari

_We'll become  
Silhouettes when our bodies finally go_

_--the Postal Service_

* * *

(Yami14)

(The people that we loved…)

Yami no owari

I was there too…

Ken

_A memory_

_A whisper_

_Can we leave this place?_

_Can we_

_Ken?_

--

"What happened?" Takeru asked, "Exactly?"

Miyako looked up. Outside the sun was shining, but she had the distinct and frightening impression that if she turned her head, if she looked, whatever she would see through the window would be something terrible and alien.

"I don't know," she said softly. She resisted the urge to turn her head, resisted it desperately. "I don't—Daisuke's been chasing around after Ken like a….like a crazy person," she said the last faintly. "After all this time…why he's doing it, I don't know. After all this time."

"Well…" Takeru turned the teacup around in his hands, "But if…I mean, if they _do_ love each other—"

"Ken is _sick!"_ Miyako brought a hand down heavily on the table and Takeru jumped. "He can't be in a _relationship_, for God's sake! Whatever Daisuke's after—no, its not that. It's not that."

Takeru turned his head. The light from the window fell on his face. It seemed and unholy radiance, the brilliance of holocaust. Miyako blinked and looked down at the table.

"I don't know what's wrong with Ken" she said, voice sullen and subdued to her own ears, "I don't know if it's something mental, or some chemical psychopathology, or—or—"

"Or Digital," Takeru finished softly, and Miyako nodded wordlessly.

"But whatever it is…it's like a whirlpool, and it's dragging Daisuke in, and what's worse he put himself in its path willingly."

"And how are _you_ involved, Miyako?" Takeru asked. The girl bit her lip and tucked a dark strand of hair behind her ear.

"I've been helping him," she admitted. "I want—I'd like to see Daisuke be happy. Maybe I was wrong but…but he's my friend, Takeru."

The blonde boy nodded. In the sunlight, wind-burned and pale-haired, he seemed a visitor from some far country, some kingdom beyond the sun. His eyes were bright and far away.

"We've all lost someone we loved," Takeru said. "You. Me. Daisuke. It just seems a pity that it should all be the same person."

"Takeru…" Miyako began, and fell silent.

Outside, the world drew away from the window.

--

Ken was standing some distance away. The rattle and crash of the train filled the silence of the car, but the three figures inside were still and silent.

Finally, Ken spoke, softly to the green wall that shifted and rocked and swayed and rolled.

"Even those that were lost are here now," he said. Daisuke looked up from his hands, but all he could see of Ken were his back and slumped shoulders. He looked at the Kaiser, but that dark form returned no answer.

"Ken…" Daisuke got up and came to stand behind Ken. He reached out a hand, close to Ken's shoulder, but hesitated. "Ken," he said again, "We can go anytime."

Ken shook his head. "No," he said. "No. I came…we came to see you."

"So you've _seen_ me," Daisuke pressed. "Let's go." He didn't look back this time, because he knew already what was behind him. "Ken this is wrong."

"I was waiting for you," Ken's voice said, and Daisuke whipped around. It was the Kaiser that was speaking. "You." He got up and approached Daisuke. "You. When it was all abyss, when there was nothing o hear but the howling of the stars…you were there. I _heard_ you."

"I don't—" Daisuke's lips were numb at this terrible approach. He backed up but the Kaiser was nearer. A gloved hand stretched out and this time there was touch-lightly, soft cloth on Daisuke' s arm. He flinched.

"You're not _real_," he whispered. He couldn't feel Ken standing behind him. He was an absence, a gap in reality, a blank blind hole. Daisuke swallowed. He said, "Don't touch me, please."

"But this is only a kind of death," The Kaiser said, moving closer. "You know what it was like. You were there. You remember."

Daisuke shut his eyes. He could remember now；the trees and mountains, the smell of pine. Trying to hold on, even then, trying to hold on…

"Ken…" he whispered, "But I loved you."

"No," The Kaiser said. "You know you didn't." He moved back a step then suddenly brought his hand around in a ringing blow to the side of Daisuke's head. Daisuke staggered hard, tried to move forward, fists clenching, but the Kaiser stood like a wall.

"_That's_ for every lie you told," he hissed. "_Liar!_ When you were mine—you were always mine!"

Daisuke inhaled sharply. "You—"

"It breaks into pieces like this," the Kaiser's voice was like the cracking edge of obsidian. "You take it all apart like this. You were always mine."

Daisuke's face hurt, his cheek and his jaw where he'd been struck. "You're not even _real,_" he said again, and the Kaiser hissed wordlessly through his (it's) teeth. "_Monster_. You're nothing but a monster. That's all you ever were."

Behind him he heard movement, suddenly: the shifting of feet on steel. A hand rested trembling on his arm.

"Daisuke?" Ken said behind him.

--

In a pale room the sound of a wind chime was audible. Yamato looked up from his table and the sheets of loose-leaf paper covered with his scribbled handwriting. He looked out the window.

--

"I had a dream, once," Takeru said. "I looked out the window, and it was so bright. Too bright. I knew it was wrong—it was terrible." He looked back at Miyako. "The Digital World is going to eat us alive."

--

"All that bitter flesh," the Kaiser was saying, "the ruby skin of the pomegranate, the taste as bitter—"

"Daisuke," Ken said again, more urgently.

"As bitter as poison, that blank lump of poison you've got in your mouth, in the space between your jaw and the muscle of your tongue."

"There's a stop. We can go."

Daisuke looked. It was true. Approaching he could see the flash of aurorae at the edges of the grass, fading like the disappearing tides. But they were slowing down.

"What is this?" Daisuke said faintly.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

"But why are we stopping?"

The Kaiser whispered, _"Blood. Blood and hunger and shadows and death, death, death…"_

"We're stopping because—because—"

"_Death…"_

"Because this is the end. Because this is all there is. You and me—"

"_You and I…"_

Ken exhaled a shuddering breath. "He's trying to kill me, you know."

"Ken?" Daisuke looked at him. He reached out and gently Ken touched his hand, let Daisuke's fingers come to rest gently on his white cheek. "Where can we go? Can we ever get away?"

Ken looked across at the Kaiser. Daisuke didn't dare turn his head. He could feel the howling darkness behind him.

"Do you want to?" Ken asked.

--

"The Digital World?" Miyako looked out the window too. She had a sense that, behind her eyes, she'd become somehow dizzy. She blinked and the flashes of light at the corners of her vision were something she had never seen. Terrible, the pain, the sense of loss.

"It isn't a real thing."

"But—" she looked back. "But, Takeru, the Digital World _exists."_

"Mm." Takeru was silent. "Do you know Zeno's paradox?"

"Of course." Miyako pursed her lips. "But what's that got to do with—"

"What is Digital, Miyako? Something already broken. In pieces. And the world exists in pieces, in quanta, in packets. Broken already. But the Digital World makes it worse. It isn't a mirror of our own world, it _is_ our own world. To the _n_th degree."

"I don't understand."

Takeru looked at her.

"In madness the mind feeds on itself. The Digital World is after all only a kind of madness, an extraordinary and shared hallucination. Ken just has it worse than the rest of us, because he was fragile to being with."

"Takeru…"

"The World is a fever. Our own world is enough of a lie, a construct of our own minds, and the act of experiencing, of processing the Digital World through our brains, is a terrible splintering of consciousness."

"How is our world a lie?"

"The human body is blind and deaf and dumb, utterly insensate to what is real. Through the actions of our sense, our eyes which receive particles of light, the nerves of our skin, our ears, and mouths and noses, our brains receive sufficient information to construct a model of reality. Only a model, Miyako, that exists in our heads. But we are evolved for this construction, and only in the cases of the insane is the failure of this model witnessed. And Ken….what do you think of Ken?"

"I don't know." A whisper.

"Ken's mind was always…easily breakable. Without the intrusion of the Digital World in his consciousness, it might have never been fully expressed, but the pressure of processing this kind of information was too much of a strain. Too much, Miyako. It broke him, in a way."

Miyako was shaking her head. "People don't 'break,' Takeru. That's just…poetic niceness."

Takeru said, "People can break. They break into pieces. Just like the world. And the World."

"Bull."

"_No,_ Miyako." Takeru stood up. "That's how it is. You think I haven't thought about this? For months it was all I thought about, in Hokkaido." He walked to the window. "You can feel it too, can't you? What do you think happened to Koushirou, anyway? He was a good kid, always, and then this…jail? _Koushirou_? For God's sake, Miyako…and what about Hikari? Even she's become unstable. Yamato…my own brother…" he shook his head. "You. Me. All of us. The World is a parasite, it feeds off our world, turns it into information, but that's already the world's primary state. That's just basic theory, the vibrations of strings, particles, waves, whatever. The Digital World has no strings to vibrate, nor particles, nothing foundational. It isn't _real_. Its engine is only found in the minds of observing organisms, throughout time. It's just _made up_, it's no more than a fairy tale. Perpetual psychopathology. Feeding on itself. Feeding on us."

"You make us sound like victims."

Takeru looked at her from the window.

"Come over here," he said.

--

"We're crossing over," Ken was saying, "Over and over and over…"

The train was slowing, with a screeching of brakes, extending itself further into the distance beyonb this point, this sort of halfway point Daisuke could see when he peered through the window. The platform was there, of course, worn cracked concrete, surface painted white, and all around it an ocean of pale and downy grass. It swayed in the breeze and Daisuke could see the lights flashing in the corners of his eyes when he blinked, bursting like headache twinges behind his eyes, like nerves popping and splattering in the hollow places of his skull.

_The human skull is nothing but hollow, hollow, hollow,_ The Kaiser was whispering, _nothing but empty places. Holes in the ground. I saw you. I know. I _know.

There was no announcement, but the doors opened a crack, and Daisuke rushed forward, planted his body and forced them wide, then stretched his hand and grasped Ken by the arm. He didn't look to the Kaiser. He didn't have to.

_Come back to me, Daisuke. I love you. I love you._

He pushed out onto the platform, dragging Ken along, the two stumbling into the harsh radiation of the sun. He looked along the track and he could the train, stretching away, far away. He looked into the car but there was nothing. No darkness. But Ken shuddered and shut his eyes.

The color was white, green. Daisuke looked. Fading in and out were the colors of antiseptic floors and walls. He could hear the echoes in the hallways, the hospital noises, the sounds of screaming.

"Like the ocean." Ken shut his eyes, face rapturous. "It's just like…you and me."

Daisuke laid a steadying hand on Ken's thin arm, but the boy didn't open his eyes.

"We're dead," Ken said. "We're dead. We're dead we're dead…"

"Maybe it's too much," Daisuke said vaguely, to nobody. He looked around for the Kaiser but they seemed to be alone, wavering, the world warping around them. "Miyako?" he whispered, not really expecting an answer. There was none.

"Let's go, Ken." Daisuke took firm hold of Ken's white hand and paced forward, with care, through a reality as thin as water. The crossed the platform and descended the small steps, into the ocean of grass, but Daisuke could hear hollow faint echoes, just as he could see the flashing of rainbows when he blinked. Like light fractured by eyelashes. He waded out, pulling Ken along, and the grass shifted and bowed in the breeze. Behind him he heard the train start up, and scream, and they continued forward as the sound faded gradually.

It never stopped completely, though. It would have been impossible.

"Daisuke," Ken said. His eyes were open and far away. _(he had a crown of stars)_

_God, Ken. You're so beautiful._

"We looked for you there, there, hoping you weren't broken," Ken said, "But you were already broken. We've all lost someone we loved."

"Who did you love, Ken?"

They were deep in…they were….(green and white)…he could see the hallways, hear the echoes.

"Ken, this is crazy."

"Shh," Ken breathed.

_The stars are shining for you._

_I love you_

_love you_

(They turned a corner. ) The hazy light made it hard to see and Daisuke winced, blinking hard, raising a hand to shield his eyes.

"There's nothing here—" he began, but then he could see (the end of the hall where the wall had been, gaping like a toothless mouth.)

"…oh," he said.

"Desperately the world breaks into pieces," said Ken, "Trying to hold on to what you can't hold on to."

"I don't understand you," Daisuke said faintly.

"Everybody said you were likely to die." Ken opened dark eyes and looked at him. At the end of the hall the light burned. The whole world was washed to white. Daisuke held Ken's hand more tightly.

"Where are we, Ken?"

"Shh," Ken hissed.

_Look at the stars. The world is beautiful. Beautiful. For you. You know it's all for you, right?_

Ken whispered, "Give me stars. Please. Let me see."

--

"It becomes reality. What your brain sees is all that's real."

"That's semantics, Takeru. Those kinds of arguments are cute in theory but don't hold up in real life. If a wall is there, you'll walk into it whether you believe it or not."

Takeru looked at her. " 'Language creates a breakable universe,'" he said.

Miyako's eyes flew wide. "What—how did—how can you—"

"I read your paper. Most of it. It was very…perspicacious."

"But I haven'—I didn't—where did you find it?"

"On the net. The new net. New Worlds, Miyako." He gestured at the window with his chin, and Miyako looked. "See there, the breaking edges? Because our perceptions are all that matter, and unlike other organisms we make up worlds that have no place, no relevancy. Language, Miyako. Simple construction. The means by which worlds are nested within worlds and cultures become universes. And Ken…Daisuke…Koushirou…you and me even, are just casualties."

Miyako stared in horror at the sky. She could see it now, where Takeru was looking, the cracks in the blue of the sky. The flashing of lights like aurorae. Delicate, splendid, like light fractured by eyelashes.

"What's causing it?" she whispered.

"Oh, this is old, Miyako. An ancient fracturing along the fault lines of reality. But the problem now is Ken. Because the consciousness that was coupled with his mind poses an entirely new threat."

"Consciousness?" She paused. Suspicion narrowed her eyes. "You mean…his Kaiser?"

Takeru nodded. The white sunlight sparked in his blue eyes like shattered glass. "Just that."

"But what about the—the Mon…the Monsters? They're conscious too."

"Yes. In a way." He paused. "In a way. But they aren't linked to human consciousness in the way Ken and the Kaiser were—are linked. The Kaiser _is_ Ken, Ken is the Kaiser. They're one person who are also two people. Not only do they have separate physical bodies, separate consciousnesses and separately housed minds—"

"Separate _bodies?"_

"But they are simultaneously both alive and dead."

Miyako was silent. She had no idea how to respond.

"But the Kaiser occupies a reality without death, a place between the world and the World. A kind of abyss. A terrible isolation. I think it drove him insane."

"Then Ken—"

"The same, and yet not at all. Ken, from what I've heard here and there, has some kind of schizophrenia."

"Oh my God," Miyako whispered. "But…you knew…?"

Takeru ignored her. "This is a real illness with real physical causes. You know that. But it is also a mirror for the Kaiser, as the Kaiser is a mirror for Ken. One cannot exist without the other, in a way."

"Then if the Kaiser dies…"

Takeru shook his head. "I don't mean it like that. Only that psychologically they're linked, and Ken would never have succumbed to his predisposition toward this illness if the Kaiser hadn't been locked in electronic limbo. Likewise, the Kaiser might have endured his state of being-non-being much better if it had not been for Ken's predisposition toward mental illness."

"And what's happening now?"

"They're trying to devour each other. Each mind is vying, without being aware of it, for supremacy in this world and feeding the psychopathology of the other. In the process, they're cutting a wide swath through our reality, as well as the reality of the Digital World. It can't possibly end well."

"No," she murmured. She looked up sharply. "But Daisuke—in all this, where is Daisuke?"

Takeru shook his head. "I don't know. I saw him, on the train. Passing by. I don't know what will happen to him."

--

_Do you love me?_

_Of course not._

"Ken." He reached out.

"Love you," Ken was saying. "Love. God."

The hallway was real. As real and hard as the sound of footsteps on tile, the squeak of rubber soles. Daisuke looked around, staring wide-eyed at the walls, cold and unforgiving, and then down to the end of the hall gaping wide open, wide open.

"Is it like dying?" Ken asked, but when Daisuke looked at him he saw no awareness there. His hand hovered near Ken's arm.

"We have to…" he began, and trailed off. "Have to," he said again. He laid a hand lightly on Ken's arm.

each one came with a soft wet pain, a headache like the popping of a bone out of its socket, until the pain ran together and became the cloud of distance, of drifting, and he couldn't feel or see and he couldn't tell which way was up and couldn't feel his arms or legs or belly or face and everything was blindness and painlessness and blackness becoming white.

He jerked away, gasping.

"What was--?"

Ken looked up.

"You and I," Ken said. "I loved you the most. We have nothing, in life, without love."

Daisuke shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands. Ken moved closer, touching Daisuke's shoulders, drawing him into a gentle embrace.

_nothing was real but the pain, and the silver beating of his heart that was pulsing beneath the growing void inside him, a light that grew, became smaller, with each beat spilled a little outwards, a liquid like quicksilver, a poison to spread through his veins and make him heavy, infect his lungs, slide into his eyes_

"Oh, God," Daisuke moaned.

"It's just like dying," Ken whispered in his ear. Daisuke opened his eyes but he couldn't see, now, anything but the soft grass

he was alone

the edges of his eyes were full of rainbows

_he could feel the presence of the stars_

_--_

Yamato walked to the window. He stretched out a hand—

The glass exploded, erupting outward.

_Blood red_

Orange flashed, red, purple, yellow, unhappy colors, colors of pain.

But he wasn't bleeding. No. It was all a lie. Yamato fell onto his knees, gasping. But the glass was whole and it had all been a lie and

"Ken?" he asked the empty air.

_You gave me stars_

_Beautifulstarsofloveshiningfromheavenabove_

"Oh, God." Yamato wrapped his arms around his head, squeezed his eyes shut.

--

"_What are you afraid of?"_ the darkness was asking. Daisuke looked around. He couldn't see anything but the pale grass and the sunlight, but he knew the darkness was there. Behind the light.

"I'm afraid of you," he whispered, shutting his eyes. He was sitting down but still he felt dizzy. He felt as though his head had was wide open and he knew if he stood he would fall over.

"_Why_?"

"Because you're evil."

There was quiet sound of laughter. "_Is that so?"_

"You tried to kill him."

"_I had a right."_

"No." His limbs felt numb. He shook his head, stared at his hands where they rested in his lap. "No."

"_Who's to say which of us is the real one? Him? Me? The one that you love best?"_

"I—no. It's got nothing to do with me."

The darkness laughed at him. _"How can you be sure?"_

_I think I—maybe I love you_

He flinched as though he'd been physically struck.

"_Did you even love him? Do you think he ever loved you? It was always a lie. But I never stopped loving you. Not once. For all these years. Daisuke you were always mine."_

"No."

"_If Ken dies, you belong to me."_

He shook his head. "No," he said again.

"_Ah, but you were so beautiful. In those days it was all starry skies and loss, and now it's just sickness and the bright burning sun."_

--

"But," Miyako asked finally, when she could bear to look at the sky no longer, "But Takeru, all these years, how did the Kaiser continue to exist? Why didn't he simply fade out as a remnant of Ken's imagination? I thought that was what he always was."

Takeru shook his head. "I don't think he was. And maybe he would have died. But. There is this problem of Daisuke. The Kaiser has a fixation, which was once Ken's fixation, and probably still is. It may have been what kept him alive all these years."

Miyako sighed. She felt very tired. Her body was heavy. Slowly she sank to the floor, by the window, and stared blankly at the burning square of sunlight on the carpet.

"Because of Daisuke?" she whispered. "Because of hunger? Because of want?"

"Because of love," Takeru said. "Without love our lives have no value. We are like the Kaiser, alone; an echo, echoing itself. Human beings don't even exist, our sense of self is just a structure built out of genetics and experiences. The need to be touched by another person is so desperate and real it can create life where no life should be."

"Then the Kaiser…."

"Maybe. Maybe this is the source of all Ken's sickness, of all their pain: Ken's, the Kaiser's, even Daisuke's. Hunger. All we really have, in the end, is our hunger."

Miyako buried her face in her hands.

* * *


	15. yami no netsu

_My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble._

_--the Angels_

_

* * *

_

(Yami15)

(approach critical mass…)

Yami no netsu

Nothing gives meaning to the things you do.

"_Why do you do what you do?"_

--

"There was supposed to be an answer here," he said, turning around. His feet shifted like a dancer's over the smooth tile floor. There was a chance they would come and find him

_Why do you do what you do?_

He inhaled sharply, hissing the air through his teeth. In the distance he could hear footsteps, soles squeaking on tile. If they found him here, what would they do? There was a rumor going around that he was crazy, though he couldn't remember where he'd heard that. Someone must have told him—

_Ken-chan_

He clenched his jaw. Daisuke—where was Daisuke? Hadn't he been here, just here? And…yes. He'd been here, Ken remembered the smell of silver and the taste of glass and all the colors of burning and pain and….

_Daisuke_

"_He's trying to kill me, you know."_

He hissed through his teeth again. _This will not stand._ He wouldn't abide it. _This will not stand._

_Ken-chan._

He grit his teeth and spun around in the direction from which he'd come, and started to run. The sound of flying feet would attract an audience, of course. He had to be faster. He had to be faster, or Daisuke would die.

--

"What will you do now?"

Daisuke looked up from his hands. The Kaiser was watching him with his head slightly cocked. A smile played around his lips.

"I want to go home," he said thickly. The Kaiser's lips stretched wide at that, a full smile, teeth glittering in the sunlight. The sky above was burned, blue as bronze, black as sugar, terrible and sweet. In that wicked light the Kaiser's face shone angelic and bright

"You can't go," the darkness said, "I won't let you leave me. Not now."

"I'm not _yours_," Daisuke hissed, grinding the words between his teeth with all the malice he could. It wasn't enough, though. The Kaiser didn't even flinch.

"You're very bad, Daisuke," the darkness said. "A terrible person. You know, it wasn't that I meant it to be this way. It wasn't my idea at all. But it seems to working out. You should be happy."

Daisuke looked at the Kaiser, into the darkness.

"How did you hear my voice? You said—" he licked dry lips, "You heard me. How did you--?"

"I heard you—I heard your voice. I saw your face and I knew your name. There in the darkness you were alive and bright and shining. Don't you know? Don't you _remember?_" Around the edge of the Kaiser's voice was a trembling line, a limning of hope, or of desolation.

"I don't remember."

"But—" the figure turned its head. "But. Daisuke. There. In that place that was not a place. It was you and I. Just you. You were the only one I heard."

Daisuke shook his head. "I never saw you. I didn't know you were there. I had—I was online, at the college. You know? Had—I guess I have a—a—" He waved a hand. "You know? Like on the radio. A show, broadcasting music. Yamato and things like that."

"Yamato…"

"You know? Music. Bands and—"

"Yes," the Kaiser said quietly. "I remember music."

"But it was never for you."

The dark head raised, light flashed on the goggles. The Kaiser stood in the sun, draped in dark blue, bathed in sunlight. Daisuke swallowed. He could almost see Ken's face in the shape of the Kaiser's jaw, in the way the lips thinned, in the stillness of the thin frame invisible beneath the insect-cape. He drew his knees up to his chest and asked,

"What was it like, the place where you were?"

The Kaiser looked away, out into the distance. Far away to an invisible horizon, concealed by the unnatural brilliance of the sun, the diffuse radiance, the softening obscurity of the air. He said, "It was cold." He said, "It was dark. I remember it was dark, though there was no color, nothing to compare. But here," a gloved hand touched his temple lightly, "It was dark in this place. It burned inside, into me, carving out holes in me, eating away my insides. There was no sound but still I could hear…the noise of the death of stars. The cacophony of apocalypse. I could hear it all."

He said, "I was alone. I was alone forever."

--

Yamato stood in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder. His hand was actually shaking where it rested on the doorframe and he could feel the trembling all the way up into the thin bones and tendons of his arm. He didn't like it, the feeling of unsteadiness, the loss of control.

He descended the stairs hurriedly and passed out of the apartment into the bright wide world. Squinting in the light he hurried to his car, parked down the street at the garage.

He wanted to say, "I'm sorry." He wanted to say, "Ken." He wanted to reach out along the threads of the world that he thought he could see out of the corners of his eyes, thick ropy cords, streaming colors and light like shattered rainbows trapped in the spaces between his eyelashes. Broken iridescences. He remembered what he'd done. He remembered Ken's face, the blank emptiness, the hollowness of stars. He remembered the sound, the threading light, the quicksilver note rising and screaming and _and_

His hands were shaking on the wheel. He pulled out onto the road. He drove.

--

_Splintering glass_

The world filled. Arms and legs, heads, bodies pieces and bits, shards of human beings.

_You can't get by_

_Here_

_Not here_

"Ken-chan," he breathed.

"Mr. Ichijouji-"

"You must stop," he whispered on the breeze.

"You must stop—"

But his legs wouldn't stop, or slow, and he couldn't stop anyway. The white-clad orderly tried to reach out a hand, tried to physically stop him, but

_like splintering glass_

The world shifted and he slipped through and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse (_white)_ and he thought he saw Daisuke.

"Mr. Ichijouji. _Mr. Ichijouji! STOP!"_

He was hurtling forward now and he could hear them all around, descending out of dark places, corners and hidden sanctuaries, white coats like dark wings, sleeves flapping, the clatter and squeak of running feet.

"Stop him! Go around—I don't know how he got out of the ward—"

A fence a _gate_, the gate, they thought, surely would stop him, but—

_Daisuke_

He _heard_ it, that sudden noise, all the pieces of the earth as they shifted and

_one…_

_two…_

_smashed_ into pieces, the squeal and the scream, the explosion of glass and his feet pounded forward through the flying shards and he saw pieces of the gate, here a hinge, there a welded corner, flying by and into the wide wild distance. He heard the orderlies shouting, he heard his name amidst the cacophony, he heard

_I was alone_

And he was through and almost free, and the doors to the outside stood gleaming and silent before him, and beyond was bright white light and then, and then…

And then—

--

"You're going to help, Miyako."

She looked up. She had that terrible taste in the back of her throat and she knew if she spoke or even opened her mouth, she would start to cry. Takeru was kneeling close to her, a smile on his face, eyes bright.

"You're going to help. We're going to do it. We're going to help them, you and I. Together, we can do it. We can help Daisuke, and we can help Ken, and we can finally, finally, after all this time, make it stop."

"Make…_what_ stop?" she whispered, and felt hot tears well out of her eyes and slowly, inexorably, course down her cheeks.

"_Everything._" Takeru reached out and took her hands in his own. "All of—everything we were asked to bear up under, that we never should have had to. All the things which make living our lives so hard, all the terrible things we've seen and done, all the people we've hurt, and those that we loved, and those that we lost. Everything, Miyako. We're going to wash it all away, here and now, while we have this chance. We _can_ do it, we _can do it_, we can make it all stop. We can make everything better."

"_How?"_ she demanded in a hoarse whisper, and her eyes flicked between her hands and Takeru's eager face.

"And you're going to help me," Takeru went on, over her question, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "I need you for this. You'll help me, won't you Miyako? You'll help me finish this thing?"

Miyako met his eyes and looked down. Slowly, she drew her hands out of his grasp, which was too tight and bordered on painful, and she massaged the back of her left hand with her thumb.

"Help you do what, Takeru?" she asked, and the question tasted of saltwater.

"Finish it. Forever. For everyone. Miyako, you're going to help me destroy the Digital World."

--

The world reached out and swallowed him up. Bright as the light of dawn, with the force of a great wave, the world embraced him, slammed against him, washed over him. s_altwater _He floundered in the crystalline noise, the sound of breaking burning pounding silver and sliver and shattering against his bones and eardrums white and bright and breaking breaking breaking _with a noise of apocalypse with the sound of the rising tide with the clash of armies and wings and angels the sun rises _bright as the light of dawn.

He stumbled and collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping and panting. The world receded from him, drawing back like the tide of the sea.

_Takeru, the sky_

_or then again the sea…_

--

"No…" she drew back, "Takeru no…"

"_Yes." _He stood up and Miyako, as if drawn on a thread, stood as well. She looked out at the shattering sky.

"We're going to break it utterly. It's right, to do this thing. It should have been done a long time ago. Before us, before those that went before us. It's something that never should have existed and now we're going to kill it."

She shook her head. Horror was yawning at her feet but she was rooted in place; she couldn't step back from the abyss, away from darkness, away from Takeru.

"How?" she asked again, and this time he heard her.

"It's because of Ken. Because of _them_. They broke all the rules, because of love because of _love_, they went on living when one of them should have died and they did it all for Daisuke.

"They…" she shuddered "No, it—no. Daisuke—Ken—"

"_Not_ Daisuke. _Not _Ken. Ken and the Kaiser. _They _did it. They broke everything. Ruined _everything._" Miyako saw Takeru's hands twitch, so fast she almost missed it, but she saw the shape and knew it for what it was: Takeru clenching his fists.

"He would have been yours," she said softly. But Takeru shook his head.

"This isn't about me. What I want isn't important."

She moved away, back to the little table. With trembling hands she began to gather up the tea things. She would take them down the hall to wash up.

"Takeru…" she paused. "Takeru, will you help me?"

--

A hand rested lightly on his shoulder. He looked up.

"Ken," Yamato said.

--

"What are you looking at?"

The Kaiser turned his head. His lips twitched in an approximation of a smile.

"Over there?" he raised a gloved hand and pointed. "Can't you see it?"

Daisuke shook his head. "It's hard to see anything here."

"Well, then we should go." He extended a hand and Daisuke got to his feet with his help. Daisuke turned his head to look into the distance.

"He said it," the Kaiser said in a low voice. "What part of the ocean is it that you can see from the shore?"

"I can't see anything from here."

"We have to walk. It isn't far."

The Kaiser turned his back and set off. Daisuke followed in his wake. As they moved forward he thought he could see, through the white haze of light, the distant shapes of trees nodding their heads in a gentle breeze.

"Where _are_ we?" he whispered.

"This is the World," the Kaiser said. "That same world. There are a multitude of parts, places as yet unseen. Those not discovered…"

"But why?"

"We believe what we are told. But the world we see is so small, so small, and what is beyond…like the sea. You understand? Like the sea."

"I'm not sure I understand." He thought he saw, in the distance, a shadow of a tumbledown fence, and a tree laden with heavy fruit bowing low.

"The sea is vast. What do we see, from where we stand? The smallest part. But the ocean is deep, and the World is wide."

Daisuke extended his hands. He brushed against the white grass. Lightly the skin of his palms and fingers passed over the downy softness. Like feathers or wings or, again, like grass.

"How did I get here?"

"You stepped between. You came looking for _him_, but he is only halfway between this World and that world. You were caught in a riptide. You were dragged under."

"Somewhere between….that place and that other place?"

"Something like that."

After which they didn't speak, but Daisuke followed the darkness through the prairie. The perfume in the air he recognized as the kind that was present only in the last few weeks of autumn. Beautiful and brief was the scent of the death of summer.

"How far do we have to go?" Daisuke asked at one point. The Kaiser didn't turn, but Daisuke thought he saw the darkness again, flashing through the world behind the darkness of his eyelids.

"_Not far now,"_ the darkness said.

And in truth it wasn't far at all. Because gradually Daisuke became aware of a noise like the rushing of the wind in branches, but when he looked into the distance he could no longer see the nodding heads of the trees. The air began to change, became heavier and warmer. The grass became sparser and began to recede and Daisuke was walking first on the earth and then on sandier ground and then, finally, on sand.

"He met his death by drowning," The Kaiser said.

Daisuke looked out at the sea. The water burned, pale and almost-blue, almost-white, but the sky was full of aurorae.

"Oh…" he said. "Oh."

"Ken was prepared to die," the Kaiser said conversationally. "For you. For me. For himself. Once. But I don't think he's prepared anymore. Something got lost or shifted or broken somewhere and now…and now…"

Daisuke looked at him, then out over the sea. He heard the same note now in the Kaiser's voice that he'd heard before. And he recognized the sound, that same fragility that belonged to Ken. The fragility of madness.

"What happened?" he asked the darkness. The Kaiser said,

"We are crossing over great distances. We are going to and fro. On the ocean, like the desert, like a desert in the white sun. _Alone with the dead, alone in eternity._"

He said, "There are some distances even death cannot cross."

--

"Why do you do what you do?"

Yamato looked at him. He bit his lip, teeth flashing in the sunlight.

"I'm sorry for what I've—for what I did." He answered.

"Why?" Ken asked.

"Because it was wrong."

"How do you know what you're doing now isn't wrong too?"

Yamato looked away. "I don't know. I was—I thought I saw…" he trailed into silence and stared through the windshield at the road, at the flash of the sun on passing cars. The sky was a vaulting abyss of blue and they were streaming toward it like water running downhill.

"We're going to and fro," Ken said. Yamato looked at him.

"What?"

"Across the ocean. We have to cross the ocean."

"_What_ ocean? What are you _talking_ about?"

"But we can't get there from here. This place is…small. Too small. All we can do is skirt the edge of it. How can we get there, before _he_ does?"

"Before who does?"

"_Him._ I called him by name. Don't you know? Didn't you hear?"

"_Ken!_ I—" Yamato broke off. Desperation edged his voice. His hands were shaking, always shaking. He didn't think he'd be able to play again. Ever again. "I don't know what you're saying. I came—I had to come here. I was sure…I don't know why. I didn't know you were here. I just…

_I heard your voice_

_over the net_

"I thought I saw…or maybe I heard…something." _distance distorted the sound, making it difficult to hear anything but the chords pitched so high they made the listener's skin crawl. The keening wail penetrated the walls and gradually killed all other sensation_

_His shadow fell on the moonlight that bathed the floor._

"What's happening?" he whispered through motionless lips. "What's happening to me?"

"But it isn't you," Ken said. "It was never you."

"There was a song…"

"About the stars, yes. Beautiful, yes?"

"Yes."

_Yes._

"It's Takeru," Ken said in a low voice. "He's come back."

* * *


	16. yami no sekai

_What is the light_

_That you have_

_Shining all around you?_

_Is it chemically derived?_

_--The Flaming Lips_

_(An untested hypothesis which states that the chemicals in our brains by which we are able to experience the sensation of being in love is the same chemical that caused the "Big Bang" that was the birth of the accelerating universe)_

_

* * *

_

(Yami-16)

(break the earth)

Yami no sekai

_Somewhere between the breaking of the earth_

_the shattering of stones, of idols_

_beliefs faith ideas tremors _

_spin_

_al cords_

_that which is most fragile becomes_

_real._

--

"I know."

Ken looked at him. "How do you know?"

"I saw him." Outside the light changed from red to green and they followed the traffic. "I talked to him."

There was silence for a while. Then Ken said, "I almost died, because of him."

"My brother didn't—"

"No. Not like that. I mean. But I almost died. And Daisuke…almost. We are all standing at the very edge of our existence. Here and now."

"Ken…"

He said, "Why do you think you're here?"

Yamato took a deep breath. He tightened his hands on the wheel. The skin of his knuckles turned white.

"I came because…I had to. I heard you…I saw you. It was—it _was_ you, wasn't it?"

"It was all in your head."

Yamato's eyelids flickered closed, briefly, for a fraction of an instant. In the veiled world he saw a flash of stars.

"But—"

"It's always in your head. Everything you see, everything you touch and taste and smell and experience. The whole world is constructed, in your head. Didn't you know that? Didn't you _know?_"

"Ken, I—"

"We have to stop," Ken said suddenly, looking out the window. "We have to stop _here._"

--

"The train is like thunder, the stars are like rain, the birds are like stars and the cracked glass and broken pieces of mirrors are like the sky you cannot see."

Daisuke hesitated. Overhead the sky seethed with a distance and brilliance he could not understand. The aurorae filled the void, the howling silence of a soul he could neither name nor identify, but which he felt was closer to him than his own. He wondered at the wildness of it when he saw a flock of birds—or stars—winging their way from the distant horizon inland, over his head, and he heard the noise of their passage and their voices on the breeze.

"I don't know what to say," he told the apparition. The Kaiser looked at him.

"You were the one that I loved," he said, and Daisuke looked down.

_Kimi wa aisuruhito na no._

"But…" he said. _Dakedo…_

"But you never loved me."

Daisuke shook his head. "You were everything that was…you were wicked and wrong. Terrible and wrong. He was…in those days, the both of you were the worst kind of…kind of monster. But. What are you now?"

The Kaiser said, "I saw a great darkness."

Daisuke looked out at the foam as the sea lapped the beach. The water reflected a hundred colors, all the vivid iridescence of the rainbow.

"I saw the darkness of the night. I saw it fill all the world. In the shadows, where pain lives, in the deepest hours where your death hunts you, I waited. Because this was my place."

_I want what belongs to me._

"I was there when Ken was awake. I was there when he slept. I was there when he felt the fraying edge, the line between his life and his death."

_Get up._

"In the water, in the sky, in the air

_come flying_

"In the skin

_it's not about pain_

"In the place in the mind that is real, that is true, that lies below what you see in your waking world, that lies beneath what all people mistakenly believe is true of themselves. Where fear lies, this is the truth. Where the animal is the human, there is the strangle-vine, the venom and needle and wire and there is where I have lived. And it kills the soul, that place, because it is real. Do you understand, Daisuke? That what is most human is most real is most animal is the place that belongs to me, and is the place that I belong, is the place that kills me and is the place where I will kill. I seek death in this place because this place is my death, and for all others too it is their own death. We flee the fear in the daylight but it catches us out in the darkness, in our dreams, and in the deepest softest place below our daylight minds it hunts us. Because this is what we are. We are hunted because we are afraid and we are afraid because we will die and we will die because we are mortal and we are mortal because we are animal and we are animal because we are human. All things human are animal and all things animal feel the truth of fear."

_Everyone said you were likely to die._

Daisuke said, "Do you understand why I never loved you?"

"It doesn't matter about that. You can't say 'love' about the part of the person that you see. Not only that. It must be the parts that are broken, those that are dead. Those that are raw and terrible. The places where even death lives, and madness, and where blood and fear and aching horror run rampant over fields and lay waste to all the earth. These are the things that make up a human being. These are the things that we fear the most. If you cannot love those parts of a person, how can you claim to love the rest?"

He said, "I can't love death."

"Yes," said the Kaiser, drawing near, "His. Your own." The dark hand lightly touched his chin, lifted it, and Daisuke met the eyes behind the glasses. "You can and you will. You must." He paused. "Or you must give up love altogether."

--

"We can't do it," Miyako said. Water dripped from her hands as she dried them on the towel.

"Yes we can. We have to. Koushirou's promised to help but we need you. Need you, Miyako, for what you know."

"About _what?"_

"About Daisuke. Ken. Their…relationship, whatever it is. I don't know how it happened exactly, but you do. And that's the weak point. The place like the join of the elbow, a joint held together only by tendons. We'll break it there, we'll shatter it into pieces, we'll sever that bond between them and we'll use that place where it breaks to tear apart the World."

"I don't think you can do it," she reiterated.

"It isn't hard, Miyako. What do you think I was doing, all that time I was in Hokkaido? I had time. I _planned_ this thing, I worked it out. It can work and it will work, and if you come with me, back to your room, I'll show you how."

She lifted her eyes and met his gaze, the person looking out from behind Takeru's bright blue eyes. And now she saw the fever and the blight and the sickness there, of a kind that she had never witnessed before. (_Or perhaps she had.)_

"I'm not letting you back in my room," she said.

"Miyako!" he exclaimed, and she shook her head sharply.

"No. You—it's time for you to go, Takeru. I'm not going to talk to you about this. I won't—I won't help you do this thing."

Takeru rocked back, away from her. She saw a brief flicker of emotion around the edges of his eyes, like a dying flame, and then he bowed his head.

"All right," he said softly. "I don't—I wish I could say I understood, but I don't. But. I can't force you to do anything you don't want to.

"Damn right," she said.

Takeru walked away. She heard the sounds of his feet descending the stairs. She stood alone in the hall and waited, and the silence fell all around her like a blanket of ashes, heavy and soft, but Takeru didn't come back. She took a deep breath and went back to her dorm room, shut the door and leaned heavily against it with her head bowed. Her dark hair fell all around her and she exhaled. The daylight fell across the floor and Miyako stared at her feet, at the point where the shadow of the wall met the light of the window. She moved her toes and watched the material of her sock stretch and distort.

But she'd forgotten something, hadn't she? There was something she was supposed to do, or say, or someone she was supposed to…supposed to…talk to…?

"No…" she whispered, raising her head, staring wide-eyed and unseeing through the window, into the brilliant sky, into the white light of day. And now her lips moved without her volition, and in the quiet little room with her hair falling and the ashes falling and the sunlight falling all around her she heard the echo of Takeru's words and soft as they came they reverberated like thunder.

"He said…"

_Miyako_

"He said we _need_ you, Miyako."

"_Need you, Miyako…"_

"He said…"

"…_Miyako…"_

" Koushirou's promised to help."

"…_but we need you."_

--

"I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen," Daisuke said. He looked down and kicked at the loose sand. "I don't—it wasn't fair of me, was it? To ask…to think he could be the person I wanted him to."

The Kaiser didn't answer. He looked Daisuke in the face, then looked away. The sea lapped gently at the beach.

"Maybe it was me," Daisuke said. "Maybe I made him…maybe I made him crazy."

The Kaiser made a small noise, and Daisuke realized suddenly that he was laughing. The dark head shook..

"This is something else," the Kaiser said. "The problem isn't that you loved him. It's that he couldn't love you. Because he didn't understand." The Kaiser paused. "Though he did try."

"I don't know what you mean," Daisuke said.

"Sometimes it just doesn't work," the Kaiser told him. "Sometimes. The pieces aren't there, the person isn't—who he think he is. Who he wants to be. This darkness, here," he rested a hand on his own chest, "here, you didn't think it vanished, did you? Like water in the air?"

"I never…"

"You never found out. You assumed it was all okay. But Ken knew. He just…it was too much. To see and feel. He tried to put it all away. But you and I…we go together, here in this place. You and I. I loved you more than anyone ever loved you. Ken and you, you and I…trying to tie up these pieces is better, but keeping them apart would kill anyone that tried. And Ken heard me, there in the darkness. Alone, in the dark, he heard me. He felt it. The burning cold. He suffered, you know. So that you would love him."

"But…why?"

"Because that was what was expected. What was right. What everyone wanted."

"Then…" Daisuke paused. "Then he never loved me."

The Kaiser looked at him and smiled. "_I_ loved you."

--

She burst out onto the street and looked up and down, seeking that flash of bright blonde hair in the crowd of brown and red. There was nothing, nothing, and she started to turn, to dash back inside for her wallet and train pass, when she heard her name.

"Miyako!"

She turned. Her eyes widened.

"Miyako," Ken called, and repeated, "Miyako, Miyako."

She opened her mouth.

"k.." she breathed, "k—Ken."

He came running up and his face as flushed with exertion and his long hair was wild. Miyako hadn't seen him for a long time and she stared at him now and reflected to herself, in the midst of her panic, that _God_ he was beautiful.

"Ken," she repeated, "Did—is Daisuke with you?"

"No," he stepped back and looked, then pointed down the road. "He came, we—came together. We came looking—for you." He reached out then, both hands, and lightly touched the sides of her face. His fingers were soft; she could feel the nerves clustered at the ends of his fingers shining through the skin. His skin was fever-hot, and he smiled at her.

"Miyako."

"It's…been a while," she said. At that moment Yamato came panting up.

"Mi—Miyako," he gasped. "What are you doing here?"

"I live here!" she snapped, rounding on him. All her fury at Takeru rose up in a sudden tide and washed away all other sensation. "Where's that goddamned brother of yours? Where in hell did he go?"

Yamato stared at her. "I don't know. What are—"

"Your brother," Miyako growled, advancing on him, "Has gone completely off the deep end, Ishida, that's _what I!_ He's officially joined the ranks of complete and total whacko megalomaniacs, _you idiot!"_ Her voice was rising to an hysterical pitch and she was waving her arms and she absolutely didn't care. "What the hell have you been doing all this time, Ishida, don't you ever _talk_ to your own brother, for Godsakes? Don't you _communicate_ with him?" She realized how many stares she was attracting from passersby and she snapped her arms down and, swearing under her breath, grabbed the arms of both men and hustled them into the lobby of her building.

"What's, uh, what's this about?" Yamato asked meekly, and then fried in Miyako's glare.

"Your brother," she growled, "You know him, the blond idiot in the hat?"

"I—"

"Shut up! That little freak has gone around the bend in the worst kind of way! He came here and point-blank asked me to help him _blow up the freaking Digital World!_ Because apparently this is now his idea of a woo-hoo good time! Didn't you teach him better than that?" She waved her arms again for emphasis and when she caught sight of a passing student gaping at her, rounded on the hapless youth with a screeching, _"What?"_

"Uh, Miyako?"

She spun back and glowered at the tall blond man as the sound of scampering footsteps faded into the distance, but Yamato met her eyes with far more audacity than she would normally have credited him with. He didn't even back away.

"Miyako," he repeated, in his most soothing tones, "Do you think maybe you should calm down?" he started to stretch out a placating hand and Miyako grabbed it and yanked the taller man down to eye-height.

"I will calm down," she hissed through clenched teeth, "When I have Takeru and Koushirou in straitjackets locked up in a _rubber room__somewhere_ with very thick walls and really big scary orderlies armed with blunt instruments and the best godamned drugs money can buy. Understand? And you, dear Yamato, are going to help me find them. _Capische?_"

"Capische?" his brow furrowed.

"Do. You. _Understand_?" Yamato nodded quickly and Miyako released him.

"But," he said, massaging his abused hand, "But I don't have any idea where he is now."

Miyako stared at him.

--

Takeru hurried into the almost-empty train.

"Koushirou," he said into the air. There was a gentle pressure in the air around him, as though he'd walked into a softer place, and then Koushirou's voice came through.

"_Any luck?" _Koushirou asked. Takeru shook his head.

"No. She seemed upset for some reason. I don't—I'm not sure what I said but she threw me out."

"_Really?"_ Koushirou's voice contained more than a hint of amusement. _"Guess you need to work on your sales pitch."_

"Ha." Takeru flung himself into a squeaky vinyl seat and poked a finger at the empty café au lait cup someone had left sitting in the window. "I could use some coffee right about now."

"_Ex_cuse_ me? Are you at a _Starbuck's_?"_

"No! God—look, I know being in jail is bad but—"

"_No,"_ Koushirou interrupted softly, _"You don't know. You really don't. You can't imagine what it's like, here."_

Takeru paused. "Okay," he said. "Okay. I'm sorry."

Koushirou was silent. Takeru sighed and picked up the café au lait cup and began to methodically tear off the paper lip.

"_Everything that's happened,"_ Koushirou said finally, _"You really think the—the World is to blame?"_

"Yes," Takeru answered absently, intent on his project. He was tearing the walls of the cup out now, shredding it into strips. "Of course. It account for _everything._ What else could it be? Are we all just—prone to really incredibly bad luck?"

"_So if—I mean, if we can do this—"_

"We _will_ do this, Koushirou."

"_Then we…we get to be the people we used to be? We get to—we can go back?"_

Takeru raised his head. He didn't answer for a while, but his hands continued working, tearing away at the empty cup.

"I think it's as close as we're likely to ever get to normalcy," he said finally. He paused and then added, "I don't know how far back we can really go."

"_Things can never be the way they were,"_ Koushirou said, and Takeru said,

"Yes," softly.

"_But maybe they can be better than they are."_

Again, Takeru said, "Yes."

--

Ken said, "Yes," quietly.

"But you don't know how to get there."

He shook his head. "It's…they're waiting for us, there. Daisuke is…there. He doesn't know. It's dangerous."

Miyako bit her lip.

"We have to get there. We have to do it. I did it before, with Daisuke…I sent him though I didn't know where. I sent him to find Ken." She looked at Yamato. "We can get there but we'll have to search, I think. We have to get to Daisuke before Takeru does."

"I don't understand this," Yamato said. "What is it you think Takeru's going to do?"

She prodded Yamato and Ken toward the stairs, saying, "He said the weakness was the relationship between Ken and Daisuke. Whether or not this is some measure of his own weird obsession with them, the fact remains that he's probably telling the truth about his intentions. He's going to go looking for Daisuke and then, he's going to seek out the Ken."

"Why Ken?"

"He said that…that he was going to sever the bond between Ken and Daisuke. That he would create a…I guess like a hole, an empty space, and that would be his leverage, his means to penetrate the—" she paused, "I guess the structure of the Digital World? So be des…destroying the thing that connects Ken and Daisuke then he will create a gaping wound in the World and he—he—"

She broke off and looked up in horror at Yamato. Ken was making a soft noise, a quiet keening, hugging himself loosely, his hair falling in his face. Miyako grabbed him by the shoulder and grasped his chin, forcing his head up.

"Ken," she said as gently as she could, trying to quell the cracking note of panic in her voice. "It's not...God it's not, is it? It can't be, it couldn't be, it isn't—it isn't…" She trailed off, trying to peer into his eyes, trying to see the answer she didn't want to see.

"Isn't _what?_" Yamato demanded, and Miyako turned her head.

"It's _him_," she said faintly, voice flecked with disbelief. "It's _him._"

"Him? Who the hell is _him?_"

"The _Kaiser! _ The—Takeru said he's alive! The Kaiser is alive and it's because of him that Ken became—became—" she waved a hand, unable to articulate the nature of Ken's apparent brokenness, "And if he's alive then he's the vulnerable place between Worlds, the place that Takeru is looking for. My God. My _God._ We have to find them both, and we have to do it _now._" She latched her hands on Ken and Yamato, her grip like a vise, and pushed up them up the stairs toward her room.

--

"He said," Daisuke paused, "He said he loved me the most."

The Kaiser smiled a little. A sad smile. "No. Well, maybe yes, a little. He thinks…he believes it. But Ken believes so much these days, that actually he believes nothing at all.

"He said he loved_ me!_"

"He lied to you."

"_No!_"

"Daisuke…." His voice was almost pitying. Daisuke stood, breathing hard and fast, hands clenched at his sides.

"Then who," he asked when he felt strong enough to control the volume of his voice. "Who would it have been? Takeru? Would he have stayed with Takeru? Would he have loved him instead?"

"It's hard to say. Predicting the past is even harder than seeing the future. It had to happen the way it did, because that's the way it happened. There was no other likelihood. No possibilities. A sequence of events led to a sequence of events as easily as water flows down the mountain to the sea. Ken would have come to you no matter what."

"Then—"

--

"_Vengeance," _Koushirou said softly. _"Vengeance. That's what you're after, isn't it?"_

"I—no! Why does everyone think that?"

"_We're human beings, Takeru. We're motivated by emotions. Not by logic, not by creed, but by our feelings. What is right, what is wrong? Yet we make this decision based on our emotions. If you take away a person's ability to feel emotion, you rob him of the ability to choose. This is a fact, Takeru. It's a _fact._"_

"It isn't vengeance. It's the right thing to do."

"_Well, don't imagine that I care one way or the other. All I want is a second a chance. I want my life back. I don't care about your belief, but I'm not going to go into this thing with someone who doesn't see clearly his own reasons for doing the things he does. You don't have to admit it, to me or even yourself, but understand that I know the truth. Understand that what I say _is_ the truth."_

"Language creates a breakable universe," Takeru said. Koushirou laughed.

"_Everything we say makes the world the way it is. Yes. I read that paper too."_

----------------------------------------------------------


	17. Yami wo osoreru

_**Refraction**__ a phenomenon occurring when a__  
beam of light or other wave motion crosses  
a boundary between two different media,  
such as air and glass. On passing into the  
second medium, the direction of motion of  
the wave is 'bent' toward or away from the  
normal (the line perpendicular to the  
surface of the point of incidence). _

_--Daintih and Gould, Collins Dictionary of Astronomy_

_

* * *

  
_

(Yami-17)

(…and dream of a better tomorrow)

Yami wo osoreru

_A voice said, _

_" emptiness _

_ "_

_there in the darkness_

_ always in darkness_

_he said, _

_" silence "_

_Silence_

_but not the silence of the void_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-  
_

Takeru exhaled.

They stood on a hill, the two of them alone amidst the vastness. Impossibly green grass stretched away in every direction, over softly rolling hills and into shallow valleys where tiny flowers grew in clumps, shining like drops of dew in the gentle light of the sun. Trees bent their heads in the breeze. But there were no birds, of course, nor true animals of any kind. In the far distance some misshapen monster shambled across the perfect verdant lawn, and Takeru's eyes narrowed.

"Better," he said, "For each and every one of us. Better. I think."

At Takeru's pronouncement Koushirou pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms. Takeru moved a little closer, pressing his point.

"It's the right answer," he insisted. Koushirou shrugged minimally, the barest twitch of the shoulders.

"Better than what?" he asked, and before Takeru could respond, before he even thought to open his mouth, Koushirou added, "A dream you dreamed all alone, in the dark silent nights a thousand miles from home?" And he smiled.

Takeru stepped back and licked his lips. Koushirou was regarding him mildly, arms still folded, lips parted slightly in a strange little smile.

"We believe in the world expressed through language," Takeru told him quietly, slowly, as if working it out for the first time. "The world we see is a process of construct. A model in our heads.

"But," he went on, "the world goes on existing outside of us. Existence goes on being."

Koushirou gave a soft snort at that, as though Takeru had said something deliberately amusing.

"The sounding sea," the shorter man remarked.

Takeru said, "Yes." He said, "The ocean is deep. The world is wide. What we see is the smallest part."

Koushirou looked at him from half-lidded eyes: shadowed, dark, full of a wicked humor.

"The Kaiser said that," he told Takeru. The blond man pressed his lips together slightly. This was a different Koushirou from the one to which Takeru had spoken before of his plans for the World.

_Perhaps_, a voice in the back of his head whispered, _Perhaps that man had never really existed at all._

Koushirou stepped some distance away, looking out from the hill where they stood. Something took off from a tree and flopped gracelessly into the sky. Takeru felt his lip curl, but Koushirou retained his mild expression.

"I'm going to end this, all of this," Takeru said hoarsely. Koushirou grinned at him.

"And aren't you going to enjoy it," Koushirou said, a statement rather than a question. Takeru bridled at the blatant amusement in his voice.

"I'm sure you find it _hilarious_ that I would have some kind of anger at the place responsible for completely destroying my life," he snapped. Koushirou shrugged, though his grin did not fade.

"I just hope you don't think you're fooling anybody but yourself with this whole 'for the good of all' line you're spouting off, to me and Miyako and probably to Ken, when we find him. I can't wait to hear you tell it to the Kaiser; I'm sure he'll find the whole thing very enlightened."

"Koushirou—"

"Don't imagine," the young man said, taking a step closer to Takeru and patting him lightly on the shoulder, "Don't imagine for one second that you have what it takes to lie to me. I know _exactly_ what's going on in that fevered little brain of yours."

"Then why are you here?" Takeru rasped, jerking his shoulder away from the shorter man's touch.

"I don't care what lies you tell _yourself_," Koushirou said, glancing toward the horizon and sticking his hands back in his pockets, "I know better than anyone what the Digital World took from us. You. Me." He rested a flattened hand on his own chest. "Hikaru. Miyako. Yamato. Daisuke, and Ken." When Takeru flinched at the last name Koushirou's eyes sparkled, for a moment. "The world is constructed in your head. What you think is the world is, in reality, a model. What you think is _yourself,_ is, in reality, _also _a model."

"I don't—"

"_Now", _Koushirou said, holding up a hand, "I've gone along with you because my ultimate goal is more or less the same as yours. I firmly believe that the link between our world and this World _must_ be severed, if we're ever going to get back our mind, souls, and lives. But you're a liar, Takeru. The worst kind of liar, because you actually believe the garbage coming out of your own mouth."

Takeru stared at the shorter man.

"What is real, what is true," Koushirou went on, "is the fear. _Your_ fear, animal and overwhelming. You build constructs and dreams, terrible fantasies, to hide from the fear, to hide it from you. But the fear, and all the darkness, the enormous silence of the void and all the loneliness of abandon, all these things are _you_, at the _core_ of you, in the nightmares and your deepest sleep. When you wake up shivering and breathless, that's _you_. It isn't in you, it _is_ you. You're nothing but an animal."

He paused, for a moment, and then added, "We're _all_ animals."

Takeru knew his mouth was open, but for a moment he couldn't find any words and simply gaped at the shorter man until, without warning, Koushirou turned away and set off down the hill, toward the distant, nearly inaudible noise of the sea.

"Come on," he called sharply over his shoulder, and forcing his fists to unclench Takeru took a deep breath, and hurried after him.

--

Ken watched.

He'd come to help. It was what Daisuke needed. He'd come to help. Why? Why them? Yamato…. He shut his eyes. No, it was the right thing. Of course it was.

_They say you hear the darkness and see the sound of the rain_, he remembered. Or it was a dream, or a terrible truth. Yes. He opened his eyes and turned, feet shifting, then turned again, making a circle, alone in the corner while the others talked.

The Kaiser was gone. He'd left. Daisuke was gone. Had something happened to him? But Ken was the one who'd left. He'd left him. Why?

Miyako. She had brown hair now. Strange in the light, the reflected surface of the sun. The hungry distance.

"Dreams," he said quietly, but no-one heard him. Yamato and Miyako both were bent low over the computer. Their voices hummed, electric, mechanical. He rubbed his arms and looked around the room, at the surface of the light on the walls, at the stark angles and cold white flatness. His eyes flickered to the not-shadows in the corners and the unremembered darkness. An incoherent darkness, silent and awaiting what he did not know. He exhaled a shuddering breath.

"Love," he told no-one, and in that moment of white storm he heard _them_, the ones who had no form. Silent and terrible, they whispered.

_"k-k-ken"_

"…chan," he breathed, swaying slightly. Somewhere else fingers tapped keys.

_"love"_

"Nm," he moaned softly, tugging at a strand of hair, liquid and poisonous between his fingers.

"Takeru," he said, so quietly that the words barely left his mouth.

_"kiss me."_

Blood, the color of blood. Sweet and sick.

_"sick. you're sick."_

"Ken-chan," he said to the walls, hands lightly touching his head, palms soft on the bone, planes of his skull.

_"love"_

But it hadn't always been this way things had been different once

Once he'd been whole.

The world didn't scream.

It didn't hurt

all the time.

_"It was never like that with you."_

_"Ken-chan."_

"Nn," he pressed his hands harder against his skull.

_"ken-chan love_

_"love and hunger_

_"blood _

_"Takeru_

"No," he breathed, trying to push through. There was a touch, distant and hesitant, a thousand miles.

"No…"

_"love you love you Takeru Takeru"_

"No no please no…" there wasn't any air, oh god oh god…

Hands fingers bones skeletons sharp hungry touch touch dream belief hope fear

Fear

"…defines us," someone was saying. "Makes us who we are. Tells lies to us. Fear is _being._"

"…what about love?"

No one can live without love.

_"Without love our lives have no value._

_"All we really have, in the end, is our hunger."_

His mouth opened without him. Without knowing seeing or doing his lips peeled back, bared shining teeth, throat clenching, muscles pulling back—

_Hurts_

"Ah," the sound forced its way out of his throat. He was crushing his hands to his head, pushing pushing pushing

love

Takeru

Daisuke

K-K-

"Ken-chan," he breathed, and half a sob choked out.

_fear_

_broken_

_sick and broken_

_left you left you_

_abandoned _

_destroyed_

_father_

_Ken-chan_

A choking noise, a sob bubbling up, a chaos of horror.

Hands grabbed his arms when he heard himself screaming. Screaming and screaming and someone was holding him. He tried to wrench free, violently jerking his arms.

"Shit—Miyako, help me—"

"We don't have _time_ for this—I thought he was okay! God_damn_ it!"

"We've got to get there! We'll take him with us! Open the gate! Open it, Miyako!"

"Ow! Dammit, Ishida!" There was a sound of crashing, a fist hitting keys and a burning glory, bright light, the ocean, aurorae, brilliant names and faces, memories and dreams

engulfed

stars night

threading on a wire

_beautiful stars_

"Love," he said, and felt himself falling.

--

"Fear defines us," Koushirou said as he moved forward unerringly in a straight line. "Makes us who we are. Tells lies to us. Fear _is_ being."

"And what about love?"

"An idea. A belief. Nothing more."

Takeru stopped.

"No," he said. Koushirou continued on for a few paces before he stopped as well, and looked back.

"What are you—"

"You're wrong, Koushirou," Takeru said softly.

"About what?"

"About…I—" Takeru broke off and shook his head. "I…don't know."

Koushirou startled him, then, by bursting into laughter, a very genuine sound of amusement and warm humor. He said, "Oh, you mean the unifying power of love? Or the idea that love is somehow present in the universe as something distinct from human experience?"

"No!"

"Then what? What am I wrong about?"

Takeru shook his head again. "I…don't know."

--

Ken was on his knees, arms wrapped around his chest and shaking all over with dry, wracking sobs. Yamato grasped his shoulders and called his name.

"Ken! _Ken!"_ He looked helplessly at Miyako who stood some distance away on the white sand. The woman came toward them, shaking her head.

"…as bad as things could possibly be," Yamato heard her saying, over the deep noise of the tide. "We don't have time to deal with this. We have to get to Daisuke."

"But what about—"

"I don't know! I don't know what's—I don't even know what set him off! I don't have any experience dealing with this kind of thing! God, Yamato—I—" she flung her hands up helplessly, "I've got to find Daisuke! You stay here, keep an eye on him, and come and find me when you can."

"Yeah," Yamato stared down at the young man. Ken. Ken. _You ought to reach out_, he whispered to himself inside his own head. _Reach out. Tell him…tell him…_

Love

I'm sorry.

"Ken," he said softly, crouching in the sand, "Can you hear me at all?"

No response, and Ken went on shaking with whatever it was; pain or grief or just the hurricane of distance, his eyes squeezed shut and body tense. Hesitantly, Yamato lifted his hands and rested them carefully, lightly, on Ken's shoulders. There was no response. Ken's body was curling in on itself, shoulders hunching and hair falling in his face.

_What do I do? What do I—_

His hands tightened on Ken's shoulders.

"You were beautiful," he found himself whispering, and the words themselves were possessed of an echo that carried, somehow; deeper and more substantial than sound, profound in its consequence.

"I fell in love with you," the whispers confessed, in the sound of the waves, the foam over the beach. "I loved you for a moment, absolutely. I…just then. Just at that moment. When you…when we…" he fell silent, but the ocean went on confessing, rushing over the sand with the sound of the wind, the noise of a thousand lives crashing together and tearing apart.

Someone said, "Love." Or perhaps it was a distant motion in the depths of the sea.

Yamato didn't know.

--

Daisuke opened his eyes. He hadn't realized they were closed, but when the light rushed in suddenly he knew with absolute certainty that he was seeing clearly again, for the first time. For the first time since he couldn't even remember when.

_I heard your voice _

_over_

_over_

_i_

…_i loved_

_You_

He got to his feet with a little trouble, scrambling upward and unfolding himself awkwardly, muscles stiff as if he'd been sleeping for a long, long time. Upon standing he rocked unsteadily and shook his head sharply, like a dog, and little sparks of pain flashed from his temples down the inside of his neck and dissipated somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulders.

He rubbed his temples, and winced. He had a sense that something had passed him by, something enormous blotting out the sun for a moment; the body of a great beast crossing the sky. A sense of presence remained, even now, and Daisuke glanced first instinctively heavenward before looking around himself at the grass moving gently in the breeze.

He was not surprised to find himself alone.

"You were wicked," he whispered to the empty air, and looked down at his feet. The sand sparkled. He exhaled.

He turned and started to run, then, up the hill away from the ocean, away from the—

_what belongs to_

_i want_

He climbed the hill, feet biting deep into the sand, pushing up, always up, through the long whispering grasses, dry fingers grasping at his legs.

After some indeterminate time of walking, he noticed a gradual rise in the land around him; he was moving not only uphill, but along a gradient leading to a higher place, away from the sea and the smell of salt. He began to see trees, and in the real world would have looked around for birds, tiny bodies dark against the brilliance of the sky. Here were no animals, though, nor insects or spiders, and the silence of a fine afternoon utterly without the noise of small animals going about their lives began to become oppressive. Once he caught a flash of something in the very great distance, some shape that might have been an animal, a monster, or a trick of light and shadow. Or again it might have been something else entirely.

When his legs eventually began to tire, he paused on a hill overlooking a small valley. Trees stood there, alone and in small groves, whispering to each other in the breeze. On a small rise near at hand, Daisuke caught a strange flash of light reflected off blond hair.

Takeru was standing in the sun-dappled shadows of a stand of trees, alone, looking off toward the horizon. His back was partly to Daisuke and he seemed unaware of his presence. Like the leaves of the trees, his hair stirred in the wind.

Daisuke hadn't seen Takeru since that strange moment on the train, so long ago the memory was like the echo of a dream, and now he wasn't even sure that what he'd seen had been real. Without even really considering his action he descended from his own hill and crossed the low-cut grass to Takeru's lonely grove. As he approached Daisuke saw that the pale man's eyes were closed and he swayed slightly, fingers working. Takeru opened his eyes as Daisuke drew near and the darker man nearly recoiled at what he saw there. Takeru briefly met his gaze.

"I wonder," he said softly, and Daisuke didn't know to whom, "I wonder if…if I made a mistake, somewhere."

Daisuke walked up the hill and stood beside him looking out to the distant line of the ocean glittering in the sun.

He heard Takeru say, "I'm sorry about this."

An arm wrapped suddenly around his throat and a hand pushed the back of his head forward. He jerked violently but Takeru's grip had a ruthless strength Daisuke could not ever remember the other man possessing. The pressure on his neck tightened and he grit his teeth, trying belatedly to tuck his chin, to grip his attacker, to strike—but by then it was too late, and the darkness was already there.

--

Miyako toiled along the edge of the sea, cursing everything, herself most of all. Her failure to help Daisuke, to help Ken, to help even Yamato, cut deeply, and she clenched and unclenched her fists.

_You failed you failed you failed, _hissed the water and the wind, _You weren't there for them when they needed you, you did it all wrong, all wrong…_

She ground her teeth. Rage at Takeru. Rage at Koushirou. Blind and stupid, twisted by…

By what?

"By this place," she said aloud, stopping and turning, looking away along the beach into brilliance. She couldn't see Yamato or Ken, though she hadn't, she thought, walked all that far. Yet they were gone. The light obscured their forms. The light so bright it pricked at the edges with darkness.

_Twisted by this place, _said her voice, in the tones of the rushing tide, _Or by…something else…_

What was it?

There was a piece of something here, a bit of glass on the sand. She half-stooped to pick it up, hands reaching down…

"Hello, Miyako."

A voice, from behind. Soft and warm, inflected with innocence. Miyako shuddered, and in her mouth she tasted acid. But she straightened, and turned to face him anyway.

"Koushirou."

I'm glad to see you here," he said. "I didn't know that you'd come."

She slid back a step and fixed her eyes on him. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to see, but it was not this. Not…no. That faint gentle smile of easy amusement, hands in pockets, eyes crinkling around the edges. He approached and stopped when she slid back a second step.

"Oh Miyako," he said, mouth turning down at the corners, "What's wrong?"

"You are," she snapped, shoulders stiff and tense, cold cracking rage pouring off her words.

"Mm." He looked down at his feet, arms straightening but hands still in pockets. He shrugged a little. "It bothers you," he observed, looking at her again.

"That you want to kill somebody? Or that you want to destroy the World." She bit down on the question, made it a condemnation.

He looked hurt. "Well when you say it like that it's _bound_ to sound bad, Miyako."

"Idiot! Idiot! How could you even imagine such a thing?"

He took his hands out of his pockets, and spread them. Miyako realized she was surprised to find them empty.

"How could I not?" He asked, and now his face, though calm, bore a serious and even pained expression, a furrowing between the brows and pinching at the corners of the mouth. "The truth is I can't believe someone else didn't think of it first. Daisuke, maybe—"

"You're a bastard," she said quietly.

"You don't think he would?" He cocked his head, then shrugged. "Maybe not. But somebody would have thought of it eventually. The damage is too great. There has to be an ending."

"No."

"The connection must be severed."

"You can't kill him! You don't even have a weapon!"

"No," he said softly, and put his hands back in his pockets and smiled hesitantly; charming, boyish. "I don't."

"How can you plan to—"

"_Really_, Miyako, you'll never get to understand anything if you don't stop to listen once in a while. A word has no meaning whatever if no-one hears it."

For a moment, silence crashed across the sky. Miyako drew a breath.

"W-what?"

"To understand words and language—this half of the equation which you failed to perceive, Miyako—not simply using words to define a world, but choosing to accept or reject meanings, ideas, principals. Belief. Lies and truth. The knife cuts both ways."

Miyako regarded him for a long time, silent, her arms folded and eyes narrowed behind her glasses. Finally she said,

"A weapon."

And Koushirou smiled.

"It cuts both ways," he repeated, and Miyako bared her teeth at him.

--

Yamato got to his feet and hauled Ken up with him. The younger man was heavier than he'd imagined but he managed to get an arm around his back and began to stumble forward, half-dragging Ken along.

If only he would look where he was going—! But his eyes, though opened, stared glassily into the middle distance, and occasionally he blinked, rapidly, as in a spasm.

What had happened? Was this normal for him, and his previous behavior the anomaly? Yamato found that too difficult to accept. How could it be so? It was not so. Ken would be all right again in a few minutes. He would He had to. This was just a—an episode, and it would pass, it would pass.

"I…never meant to hurt you," Yamato said, to the air. Perhaps it was only the air which heard him.

He stumbled forward, step by step, dragging the weight of Ken's body. Too much, too far. It was too far to go. Already Miyako's distant form had flashed into nothingness, consumed by the light reflected from the surface of the water, beneath the strange curtains of the overhanging sky. Yamato squinted into the distance and could see nothing, no one, just pooling whiteness that made his eyes water.

_Do you know the names of the stars?_

Yamato paused, feet sinking heavily into the pale sand. A shiver passed over the surface of his skin.

--

"Not the silence of the void," Koushirou said. Miyako curled her lip.

"You talk too much."

"Hmm." He reached out and grasped her wrist, hand completely encircling it. "C'mon, we've got to get moving."

"Where are you—what do you think you're doing?" she demanded as he started to pull her away from the beach, up a hill toward god-knew-what. Koushirou stopped and looked back, eyebrows hoisted in surprise.

"Didn't you want to see what we'd planned?"

"I—but I need to find—"

"Miyako come _on!" _He pulled again, a little harder, but without any real force. Maybe she'd been wrong about….

"Stop," she said, pulling back, pushing against his hand on her wrist, trying to pry him off. "Koushirou stop, I have—I need to go. I have to find Daisuke."

"Do you?" he stepped closer without releasing his grip and Miyako realized, suddenly, that he was taller than her. Of course he was. She'd always know it. And yet she'd never realize that she had to look up to meet his eyes.

"Are you going to let go or not?" she asked softly. And for a moment, just a moment, she saw it: the skin beneath the face, beneath the gentle smile and bright eyes. The expression that did not change, the mind that worked and worked and gave nothing away, the stillness, always stillness. It distorted his expression for a flickering instant, and was gone.

Koushirou shrugged.

"All right," he said, and released her wrist so suddenly that Miyako nearly stumbled back. She grasped at the place where his hand had been and realized at that moment how tense his grip had been, how strong. She held her wrist and lifted her chin, and watched him walk away.

When he disappeared over the crest of the hill, Miyako remembered. Stooping, she picked up the small, sharp thing at her feet and held it in her palm, turning it this way and that, watching the flash of reflected light.

* * *

_A/N: There is another chapter after this (mostly complete, in need of some editing) and there will have to be an epilogue of some kind, I think._

_I was going to wait to post this until I'd completely written everything, and maybe I should have but…I've had this sitting on my drive for a while and I think it's pretty much ready to go. So…I might not post 18 until I've finished the epilogue, though. Sorry for the long wait._

_The thing at the beginning still bugs me--it was meant to be more stretched out, but the lousy site doesn't allow that--not even in html. Sorry if it seems a bit weird. *sigh*  
_


	18. Yami no shinen

_There's a hole in the ladder,  
__a fence we can climb;  
Mad as a hatter,  
You're thin as a dime._

_Go out to the meadow__  
The hills are green;__  
Sing me a rainbow  
Steal me a dream_

_--Tom Waits_

_

* * *

  
_

(Yami-18)

(listen to the rain)

Yami no shinen

He dropped to his knees. The weight was too great. Ken slipped, and from a great distance Yamato watched him fall away, down, down to lie in the sand, hair spilling across his face, eyes wide and blank.

_Get up._

A voice.

_Up._

A cold dissolution, ice melting in …

_Love?_ It mocked. _You talk of _love_?_

Yamato lifted his eyes. A hand grasped his hair and wrenched his head back and he stared suddenly into a howling horror, a blackness he had never seen, a vivid starless dark.

"Do you know the names of the stars?" It demanded.

Yamato shook his head.

"No," he whispered, "No."

"Then how dare you talk of love?" The hand tightened in his hair and the weight on his limbs, the terrible weight, crushed him down, down to the sand.

_"Do you know the names of the stars?!"_ It demanded.

"No!"

The hand was removed. The presence retreated.

"No," a voice whispered, and Yamato looked up, into an impossible distance, far away to where Ken stood looking down, crowned in light.

"No," Ken said again, softly, "No, you don't know anything." His eyes shifted. "He told me…"

"Ken!" Yamato struggled to lift his arm: elbow, fingers, wrist, expecting at any moment to hear the _snap!_ of bones straining against the tremendous pressure at the bottom of the sea. He reached up, stretched out a hand, but Ken was looking far away, over his head. His lips parted in a slight smile.

"He told me…"

The weight was too great. Yamato could not stand; he was holding himself upright by his arms alone, and sinking deeper into the sand with each passing instant. He grit his teeth and tried to drag himself forward.

"Ken…" he faltered.

_"Ken,"_ said a voice on the breeze, and the dark man turned his head slightly, and the breeze lifted his hair and—

He was gone.

Yamato collapsed into the sand.

--

Daisuke shuddered, and pulled himself to his feet.

_(no, that was wrong. he hung in sleeping darkness, stillness, cold that was not cold_

_blind, oblivious to blindness, insensate, inert, the mind aflame with untruths)_

Daisuke shuddered and

_(no)_

Daisuke—

Dai—

_Daisuke!_

The shock tore into the heavy dark, the cold black depth he hadn't realized surrounded him. Light stabbed into his eyes and shredded his awareness and he sat up, gasping and reaching out even as brilliance opened all around and the flooding radiance caught him up and he was falling, away and down and away, and falling and falling—

A hand wreathed in flame gripped his wrist and all his being went on falling and he was tearing apart in pieces, skin ripping off organs melting, tearing away in the storm of cosmic particles

He opened his mouth in a scream and the shattered world interrupted….

"Dai

_ suke!"_

Gasping he came awake in a cool twilight smelling of moss and freshwater and damp earth. He sat up and ran a hand through his hair, then lightly touched his face, trembling fingers noting the presence of nose, mouth, bones under the skin.

"Oh, _God_," he breathed.

Some distance away he saw Ken, squatting on a spray-dampened, mossy stone, beside a pool of clear water. He was staring at something in his hand, turning it over and over. Daisuke caught the brief glitter of light.

"Ken?" he ventured, after a long stretching silence. He voice rasped against his throat.

"What is not heard…." Ken murmured, then looked up, as if just noticing Daisuke's presence.

"Is the Kaiser here?" Daisuke croaked, getting to his feet. He gently probed his neck, and winced.

"Does it hurt?" Ken asked, approaching and reaching out. Daisuke nodded.

"A little. That damn Takeru—what's he trying to pull?"

Ken licked his lips.

"You don't know," he said.

Daisuke shook his head. "I was talking to…the last thing was…"

"I know." Ken looked down at his feet. "Sorry…"

"For what? And where are we? Can we get—"

"It's Takeru, and and and Koushirou," Ken said suddenly, lifting his head on a sharp inhalation. "They're trying to kill you."

--

"Yamato!"

Strong small hands grasped his arms and he was rolled over and hauled into a sitting position, to stare into a pair of worried brown eyes. He saw the hand go back and glint briefly in the sun and recollected his wits barely in time to catch the slap as it came rocketing in.

"Miyako! I'm fine! Really!"

With a relieved sigh she let him go and slumped back on her heels. Yamato pulled himself together as best he could, brushing the sand out of his hair and off his shoulders and endeavoring to stand. Miyako helped him get to his feet.

"Where's Ken?"

"He, um…" He felt a flush creeping up his face and mentally cursed his pale skin, "I don't know what happened. I…I saw something horrible and Ken was…was here and then…"

"And then he was gone," Miyako finished, nodding. She turned her head and glanced around, noting the absence of any footprints besides her own, Yamato's, and those of Ken when Yamato had dragged him the several yards to this place. The sand around them was scuffed but there was no evidence that Ken, or anyone else, had walked.

"Maybe the Kaiser knows," she mused, turning something over in her hand. When she caught Yamato looking at her she held up the object: a little piece of clear glass, broken edges worn down by the sand. It shone.

"Why…?" Yamato began, and Miyako shook her head, biting her lip. She was silent for a moment, thinking.

Finally she stuck the piece of glass in her pocket. "I think I understand now what's going on," she said. "With Koushirou and Takeru and Ken and Daisuke. And I think now that I was wrong, about Takeru and Koushirou wanting to get rid of the Kaiser. I thought he would be the hole and the connection could be severed through him. But I was wrong."

"I'm not sure I like where you're going with this—he's my brother, you know."

Miyako gave him a grim little smile.

"Then we'd better hurry," she said, "And stop them before they do something we'll _all_ regret."

--

It was Takeru who saw them coming.

Standing some way apart from Koushirou he watched the two as they hurried along the hills, and began the climb toward their position with an unerring accuracy that left him wondering.

He turned.

"Miyako and Yamato are on their way," he said quietly, approaching Koushirou where he knelt by the spot Daisuke had so recently occupied. A man-shaped imprint in the grass was all that remained of his presence, and Takeru looked at it briefly before clenching his fists and looking away.

Koushirou glanced up from half-opened eyes. His hand closed around something small and egg-shaped, and vanished it back into his pocket.

"Miyako and Yamato?" he asked, rising. He shook his head and chuckled, and Takeru bristled.

"Leave my brother out of this!" he snapped, and Koushirou looked at him.

"I would never do anything to hurt Yamato," he said in injured tones. "What do you think I am? Besides, they can't do anything to stop us now."

Yamato looked again at the shape in the grass, a shadow now of the man he'd known. He wasn't exactly sure what it was Koushirou had done to Daisuke but…well, it was what he'd meant to do all along, wasn't it?

Of course it was.

"You handle your brother, I'll talk to Miyako," Koushirou told him, even as the two were mounting the hill and striding purposefully in their direction. Miyako bristled with righteous wrath. Even Yamato had a set to his jaw that nearly made Takeru step back, before he remembered himself and planted his feet.

"Found you," Miyako said, when they'd gotten within distance to speak normally. Takeru blinked. He'd expected shouting.

"I have something you might be interested to see," the girl went on, and her hand went into her pocket. In an instant Koushirou's hand flashed out of his own, palming a small device. Yamato's brow furrowed.

"The hell is that?" he demanded.

"Shh," Koushirou put a finger to his lips and said, "There's no argument here, and nothing to fight about. We've finished what we came to do, and now it's time for all of us to leave."

"Finished wha—" Yamato began, but Miyako interrupted.

"What did you do, you bastard? _Where's Daisuke?_"

Takeru's eyes flickered, briefly, to the shadow in the grass, and Miyako and his brother followed the glance without understanding what it meant.

"I had a job to do," Koushirou said, in world-weary tones. "It's done now. We can go home. Without the connection, Ken and the Kaiser will be separated and in the end—"

"Idiot," hissed Miyako.

"In the end, it will be okay. Everything will be okay, you'll see."

"You said you didn't have a weapon!"

"This?" Koushirou looked at the device in his hand. "This isn't a weapon."

"It is if you use it to kill somebody!"

"But he's not dead," Koushirou protested. Takeru's eyes widened.

"At least," amended Koushirou, "Not yet."

--

He leaned on Ken where they sat beside the pool, and closed his eyes.

"Are you angry?" Ken asked.

Daisuke shook his head without opening his eyes.

"I'm just tired."

"Does it hurt?"

Daisuke opened his eyes and looked down at his hands.

"No," he said, "No, I think the pain's gone."

Ken said, "Is that an ending?"

"Well…" he said, "Kind of an ending."

Ken was silent. Daisuke said, "The Kaiser told me everything."

"He didn't tell you anything."

"No I…I think it was the truth. I think that…"

"Please," Ken said, closing his eyes and leaning forward, "Please stop."

Daisuke reached out and gently rested his hand across Ken's forehead, as though the man were feverish. Ken made a small noise.

"But it hurts so much," Ken whispered, "All the time."

Daisuke shuddered. He pressed his hand harder to Ken's head and drew him in close, foreheads nearly touching. As if he could reach inside the skull, as if he could quiet the noise. As if he could….

Ken made a choked, tearing sound, hands falling limp in his lap, body shuddering. Daisuke held on tighter, afraid already that he was losing him, again.

_"Ken?"_

_He looked at him, standing across the room, one hand on the wall. It was getting worse, it had been for days, but no one had seen him like this, no one but Daisuke. Ken's eyes were somewhere else and his lips were moving; he raised his head and looked past Daisuke, then shut his eyes and shook his head sharply._

_"Go away," he said._

_"Ken I—"_

_"Away!" He shouted, and suddenly he was across the room, pushing Daisuke, shoving him back toward the door. "It hurts it hurts I—"_

_He pushed and Daisuke grabbed on, not knowing what else to do. Ken's body stiffened and he pulled his arms back, but Daisuke was strong._

_"No! Leave me alone! Oh God…" his legs buckled and he opened his mouth and suddenly he screamed, a horrible animal sound strangling against another noise, a gasping breathless violence and Daisuke was nearly pulled off his feet as Ken crashed to the floor, Daisuke still holding on like a fool, not knowing what else to do._

_"It—Ken, it'll be all right," he said helplessly, even as his arms slid off and his hands hovered near his shoulders, trying and failing to reach out._

_"It's…it's gonna be okay," he asserted, when he looked up, and saw Ken's mother standing in the door._

"I don't know the right answer," Daisuke said. He stroked Ken's head, hair smooth against the skull, and rocked the body of his friend, once his lover, and his downfall. At the approach of another figure he looked up.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" he asked the Kaiser.

The mirror-face of Ken was sad. He looked down at his other self.

"He threw me away," the Kaiser said.

Ken shuddered at the voice, and Daisuke's grip tightened.

"Can't we help him?" he pleaded with the dark.

The Kaiser said, quietly, "You've always chosen him over me."

In the stillness that followed, there was a sound. At first Daisuke thought it was the water trickling down the stones into the pool, but then he saw Ken's loose hand open and something fall, glittering, flashing with reflected light.

The Kaiser stooped and picked it up, held it up between thumb and forefinger, shifting it so that it sparkled.

Daisuke looked at his face, and the Kaiser met his eyes.

--

"Look at this!" said Miyako, thrusting her hand toward Takeru's face. He flinched back, then realized she was holding something between thumb and forefinger, something that glittered…

"A piece of glass?" his brows furrowing, he reached out to take it. "I don't understand…"

"Look at it," Miyako said urgently. "What do you see?"

"See?" He held it closer, turning it slightly, peering through it at her face. Lowering it, he said, "What am I supposed to see?"

"Are we really going to stand here and argue?" Yamato interjected quietly. "Daisuke's dying while we stand around blathering…"

"This is _important!_" Miyako said, approaching Takeru, reaching out. For a moment he thought she was going to take his hand, but she hesitated and drew back.

"Please, Takeru," she murmured. "Please look…again."

She was trying to tell him something. Koushirou was standing some distance away, face expressionless but for a slight narrowing of the eyes. Takeru knew his older brother was watching the shorter man, waiting. When cornered, Yamato was a fighter.

"Takeru," Miyako repeated, pleading. He looked at her, and licked his lips. She was trying to tell him something, something he couldn't understand, something he couldn't…couldn't see.

He couldn't see.

He looked down at the shard in his palm. From deep within a memory stirred, from so far back that he couldn't remember how old he'd been when he'd first heard the truth, or who had told it to him. His lips moved slightly, without sound, and then he spoke to the open air.

"Glass is…a liquid," he said. "A hyperviscous…liquid…."

"…Takeru…" her voice cracked. "_Please_." There were tears in her eyes. "You can't let him die."

"This has gone far enough," Koushirou snapped, striding toward Takeru, one hand still clutching the strange device without markings. "It's time to go home."

Takeru raised his head and for a fraction of a second he didn't recognize the man, or any of the people standing there with him. There was only the sky, alive with aurorae, and the grass stretching away down the hill and him, Takeru, standing alone under a tree as the world pulled away and rushed back in, all at once, like the surge of a tide.

His hand closed, trembling, on the shard. He looked at Koushirou and opened his mouth, but the words wouldn't come. He had no words; he'd forgotten them all.

Koushirou lifted the device and there was a sound like the _hum!_ of a wet finger on a glass. Takeru looked down at the light blooming under his feet, dissolving the grass, the roots of the tree, the hill, swallowing everything, even him. A noise like the wind started to rise, first a whisper, then a breeze, a rising thunder, a whistling howl, a hurricane.

"Is this what you did to Daisuke?" Miyako shrieked above the noise. "Are you going to kill us too?"

Koushirou looked at her, unruffled amid the light and noise, feet standing flat on nothing. He smiled, upper lip pulling back, terrible in the light.

"_Koushirou_!" Her voice was so close—turning he saw her standing still amid the storm, fists clenched, face twisted in rage. He saw her move, hands stretching out, in the same instant that Yamato did, turning in the light to face Takeru, arm pulling back, hand clenching in a fist. Takeru's arm came up and the shard tumbled out as Yamato swung, fist striking Takeru's face, knocking him down, except there was no down and he went on falling, head first, fingers clawing at nothing, into a bottomless brilliant void.

He opened his mouth to scream but there was no sound, no air for sound to carry through, no heart in his chest to feel the horror of it, nothing but a hollow space, a clenching fist, tightness and rage, rage, hate—

And blackness opened beneath him, and he was swallowed up.

--

_Ken said, "It never gets any better."_

_"It will," Daisuke promised, with a conviction he could not imagine ever feeling again. "It will."_

_"No." Ken turned to look at him, or past him, away into…something. Sitting in a chair by the sliding glass door he was a shadow before the blazing Tokyo sun. _

_"I'll stay with you. I'll help you—help to make it better."_

_"No," Ken said, looking down at his pale hands, resting on his knees. "No, you won't."_

Daisuke pushed Ken's hair out of his face. Sitting on the mossy ground with his arms around Ken's shoulders, he gently rocked and gazed into the middle distance where the leaves were hung with drops of water, glistening in the alien light.

"It should never have been like this," he said, to himself or Ken or maybe to the empty air. Maybe it didn't matter anymore. "Everything I do goes wrong. I keep hurting you and I don't know how to stop. The Kaiser says…he says I don't love you. That I never accepted you, _all _of you, and I—I'm afraid that he's right. At least about…" he trailed off.

"But I—I don't think he's right about my never loving you. No. Because I _feel _it." Absently he stroked Ken's pale forehead. "I feel it somewhere inside and it just hurts so much. God, it hurts. And now…and now…" he lowered his forehead to Ken's and shut his eyes.

"I don't know what I did wrong. I think I pushed you to this, into this…and so many other things happened and some of them I don't even know about. You were just being destroyed, torn apart again and again. I don't know if it's my fault, or Takeru's, or the Kaiser's, or even yours somehow…or maybe it wasn't really any of us." He paused. "Maybe it wasn't anything at all."

A sound, then, like the chime of a bell heard from a great distance.

"What? Ken, what?"

"I heard your voice…I heard your…" Eyes looked up into his, and for a moment hope thrilled through Daisuke, cold and merciless. Then the eyes shifted and they cut through his gaze, pierced his skull, and continued on into some darkness. "Your voice, I heard your voice your voice I I I heard I heard…"

"Oh, _God_…" Daisuke squeezed his eyes shut and wrapped his arms around him.

--

_"Better,"_ someone was saying some distance away, _"Better…I think…"_

_But it doesn't get better,_ he thought, _Not ever…_

His head hurt. He couldn't open his eyes…or they were already open, but the darkness was so black he couldn't tell. He groped at his face and felt his eyelids fluttering under the touch, wide open in the dark, the suffocating dark…

_I can't breathe! _ He tried to cry out but the sound wasn't there, and his chest and throat were collapsing and oh god, was this what Koushirou had done to Daisuke, was this the plan all along? And now he was getting rid of Takeru too, and he should never have trusted, never depended on, never relied on—

He clawed at his throat and the old pain, the pain in his head where he'd been struck, blossomed like a weeping silence in the dark and he saw the blood run down, dull red shining, burning fever-bright in the black.

_Yamato…_

He reached out and the blood smeared on his hand and he saw now, far away, the green hill and the tree, all alone, and away in the distance a swathe of light—

_Yamato!_

The light of the ocean, the sea stretching on forever, forever, vast and untameable, without mercy, love, or harbor. Terrible in its fury, unmatchable in glory it lit the dark, burned the black away, burned away the blood, the pain, burned into his eyes and went on burning dry and cold and silver-white. Burning away his vision, searing away skin and bone and the pain the pain the _pain_

_Yamato help me!_

He opened his mouth and the water surged over him even as he screamed, the sound tearing through the light, tearing his being to shreds.

"Help me! Somebody please _help me_!"

--

Falling through the air. That was how she would always remember it—falling and falling and yet standing still, in one place, while around her the storm raged and howled and then…

It was over.

Miyako dropped to her knees, fighting not to throw up. Her hair hung around her face and she raked it back with claw-like fingers and held it as her eyes stared wide and dry at the ground. The pain was very great.

"Miyako!" Strong hands grasped her shoulders and she was dragged upright, and blinking she forced her vision to focus past the sudden pain in her head and the weight of guilt on her heart.

"Yamato."

And the world rushed back in a roar of traffic and clatter of feet as the crowds surged around them: two stones in a vast ocean. In the midst of the frenetic life of the city they stood, breathing in, breathing out. Yamato released her shoulders and massaged his hand; glancing at it, she saw bruises.

"You hit him," she observed wonderingly.

"I had to."

"Yeah." She looked around; they were standing on street outside her apartment. She looked up at the sky. Her eyes narrowed and slowly she felt her hands clench into fists.

"We have to go back," she said. "Find Daisuke, and Ken. Find your brother."

"And what about Koushirou?"

"Yes," she said quietly, "We'll find him too."

--

_"I'm sorry," she said, looking away from him, down at the ground. For the first time Daisuke realized how much taller than her she was. "I'm sorry. You can't see him."_

_"But I—"_

_"No, no." She shook her head. "Leave him alone. Just please, please…leave him alone."_

"Along came a spider," the Kaiser said as he settled himself on the rocks above Daisuke and gazed off into the middle distance, fingers interlaced, a slight smile on his face.

"I think it's time for you to send us back," Daisuke said, looking up.

"What makes you think I have the power to do that?"

"If anyone does, it's you. I don't even know where we are. I've lost…Miyako, and Yamato, and…I'm all alone here." He glanced down at Ken and licked his lips, then sighed. "I don't know what to do anymore."

The Kaiser smiled without looking at him. "You never were any good at taking advice."

"I've always tried to do my best."

"I didn't say that was a bad thing." He paused. "No, it's not always a bad thing."

Daisuke closed his eyes and put a hand to his head. The skin felt surprisingly cool, slightly dampened by the nearly invisible mist that saturated the air around them.

"I'm tired," he said, and there was a soft noise, a gentle whisper as of the sound of the wind through small and fragile leaves. Daisuke opened his eyes.

"_Here_ you are!" Koushirou said brightly, "You know, I've been looking absolutely _everywhere_ for you!"

He leapt to his feet in shock. _strong arms around his neck._ Ken whispered and shifted, heels digging into moss and earth. The Kaiser was gone but near Daisuke's ear a breath exhaled.

_"It burns the heart."_

Daisuke shook his head sharply.

"Get out," he said, voice hoarse and harsh. He lifted a hand without knowing and rubbed his neck, narrowing his eyes at the shorter man. Koushirou flashed a knowing little smile and rocked on his heels, forward and back, hands in his pockets. Ken made a hissing noise. Daisuke didn't move. He watched Koushirou, saw behind the gentle rocking motion a kind of terrible stillness, a moment between breaths when the world paused. Saw Koushirou sift through a host of emotions—anger? Violence? Wounded innocence? Saw him discard them all off-handedly.

"It doesn't have to be like this, you know," Koushirou said, still smiling faintly. He had the air of a man standing empty-handed before an armed foe with one nasty trick still up his sleeve. Daisuke scowled.

"I know you want to kill me. Ken told me all about it." As he said the words he avoided looking down at the ravaged form near his feet. He shut his eyes briefly and a shudder passed though his body, starting at his heart and ending with the chilling of his skin and shaking of his hands. He met Koushirou's eyes. The other man lifted his chin slightly. The smile was gone, and all illusion, fled into the shadows under the trees so swiftly it might have never been there at all. Koushirou regarded him with the calm of a man with no soul. The slow cracking stillness of roots boring into the earth. Inexorable. Absolute. And he shrugged.

"It isn't so much that you have to die," he said conversationally, and a chill ran up the back of Daisuke's neck, to the base of his skull. "It's just that you can't be alive. But there's at least one other way…" he drew his hands from his pockets, wristbones jutting, and Daisuke saw in one hand a smooth egg-shaped object, dull and unmarked and unremarkable. He tried to back up but his heel struck the stone behind him.

"No," Daisuke said, "You can't."

And the Kaiser said, _"No._

_"I'm sorry."_

Koushirou's head was wrenched back with a noise like iron screaming, the Kaiser grasping his skull and forcing him to his knees. The man's hand convulsed and the unmarked device dropped from his hand into the ferns and mosses. His knees hit the ground with a thud. His mouth opened soundlessly and he stared up at the dark form and brought a hand up to grasp at the wrist of the thing that held him.

_"And I never pined for the upper skies," _said the Kaiser,  
_"Whose blue came down  
__in the dead men's eyes."_

Koushirou's mouth worked, and he said, "What?" voice faint with surprise.

"Oh, that's just the way he talks, you'll get used to it." Daisuke was suddenly light-headed, even giddy. He sank down on the dampened stone behind him and a hand fell to rest on Ken's smooth head, unconsciously mirroring the Kaiser a few steps away. Only Koushirou's face showed the first real emotion Daisuke had seen since his arrival. He'd shut his mouth and his lips and eyes were tight at the edges.

"I couldn't kill you if I tried," the Kaiser said, answering the question no-one dared ask. He let go of Koushirou and the man went on kneeling and Daisuke realized with a shock like a nerve snapping that he did so not out of fear, or because of the Kaiser's power, but simply because it pleased him to do so. He was waiting to see what would happen.

"You couldn't even try," Koushirou observed, sinking back on his heels and looking up. "Everyone fears you, but you're only an echo, and that's all the power you have. You show a person himself and it comes as such a shock. But I already know who I am."

Ken laughed. It was an appalling sound, and everyone, even the Kaiser, looked over at the noise. His frame shook, but he was staring into the dark. Daisuke stroked his head absently.

"Shh," he said gently, "Shhh."

"Nobody knows who they are," the Kaiser said, looking back at Koushirou. "Especially not the ones who think they do."

Koushirou made a sharp angry noise and got to his feet, movements short and sharp.

"I looked into the dark," he said, words clipped and harsh.

The Kaiser regarded him for a long stretching silence. Finally he said, "Ken looked into the dark."

_"No."_ Koushirou ground the word deep into the space between them. "No he _didn't._ He ran away. He broke in half. And in half again. And here you are. But you can't see. You don't understand _anything_. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius. Didn't you _think?_ Can't you _see?_"

Daisuke's head shook convulsively. "Koushirou this is wrong. You must know it's wrong—"

"Don't you come to me with your dreams of truth," Koushirou snapped, rounding on him. Daisuke backed away; Koushirou's eyes were wide, too wide. Something was there in that space between the iris and the skin, something terrible and trembling, something like the howl of an animal lost in a great darkness being slowly devoured by the abyss. "Don't you see _anything_, anything Daisuke, can't you understand?" His voice broke and he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and drew a shaking breath. "Right and wrong, good and evil…_god_." He shut his eyes, then opened them again.

"Daisuke you must know this, Ken must have explained it to you, or the Kaiser, or Miyako. _Somebody._ Or maybe you figured it out yourself. Because once you see it you can't close your eyes, can't give it back, can't stop knowing. You can't ever go back to being the person you were. Can't—" he shook his head sharply. "Daisuke there is no right and wrong. Nor good nor evil. Nothing. There's nothing. There's what you choose, what you choose to do. That's what it means, what it all means. What you have the strength and willingness to do and you can do _anything you want_. Anything at all."

Daisuke was shaking his head, uncomprehending.

"Nothing to stop you, help you, save you. The world is a pit, a black pit without walls, without a bottom. Nothing to arrest your fall—you fall forever. Knowledge and language and belief—clouds. Mist. Smoke." He made a sharp, dismissive gesture. "No truth. No truth, Daisuke. Nothing is true. Nothing is true. There's nothing to hold on to at all because everything is made up in your head. Nothing…there's nothing…"

Koushirou looked down at his hands, shaking his head with short, sharp jerks, as if it hurt him. Daisuke drew a shaky breath and let it out.

"I looked into the dark," Koushirou said quietly. "I saw myself. I saw everything."

"And what about love?" The Kaiser asked. Koushirou glared at him.

"Don't be obscene."

"…but that, too…," someone said, and at first Daisuke thought it was the Kaiser before he realized Ken had stirred and pulled away. He was shaking his head slightly, eyes turned to some distant point in the way of a blind man, lips moving in occasional silence, then dropping words like heavy stones onto the damp and verdant earth.

_"Silence,"_ he murmured, as if explaining some new and wonderful discovery. "There, in the darkness, always in the darkness…"

Koushirou looked at him, head slightly on one side, and Daisuke would remember the look on his face for the rest of his life. Gone beyond all caring, beyond love and fear, the light of abyss burning behind his eyes.

"But not," said Ken, "the silence of the void."

He seemed to have captured Koushirou in a momentary fascination, akin to the motions and rhythms of a snake-charmer. Just for a moment, an instant, the other man was still, standing amidst the green, damp twilight. He seemed to have forgotten everyone else.

Only Daisuke saw the Kaiser lift gentle hands, naked skin in the soft light. He said, _"Shh, shh,"_ and his bare hands rested on the sides of Koushirou's head, a thumb on each temple.

Koushirou's eyes went wide. His body stiffened and his hands snapped up to clutch at the Kaiser's wrists. His lips trembled and his eyes rolled up into his head, body wracked with convulsions: once, twice, and then trembling, shaking, mouth without words, eyes without sight. Daisuke looked away, once, and then turned back in horror, captured by the simple, gentle violence.

When his muscles finally slackened the Kaiser gently lowered Koushirou to the earth, to lie in the damp, all-embracing green. He knelt by the prone form and stroked his forehead, and his face was sad, although he smiled. Daisuke caught his breath.

After a time the Kaiser looked up, and met Daisuke's eyes. He said,

"He was right, you know."

Daisuke exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"What was it you said, before? About the sky and..."

"That? An old poem. '_I never pined for the upper skies, whose blue came down in the dead men's eyes; Drowned men with the salt on their blackened lips; Who slid , drifting in, from the wrecks of ships'._ Frivolous stuff, probably. But not without value."

"What does it mean?"

The Kaiser looked down again. "Koushirou would say that the meaning depends on you."

"Would he be right?"

"Well, that…depends on you."

"And what about…?"

"The rest?" The Kaiser plucked a grey round object from the mosses and ferns and came to stand in front of Daisuke. Extending a hand, he drew Daisuke to his feet.

"He was absolutely right, of course," The Kaiser said. "Except for one thing."

"Which is?"

"What you see is never the truth." A shard of glass, its edges worn down by sand, was pressed gently into Daisuke's hand. "It's only what you see."

Daisuke's brow furrowed. "I don't—"

But the Kaiser smiled, and held up a hand.

"It's time to go," he said.

He looked at Koushirou, lying blank-eyed on the ground. "What did you do to him?"

"He's staying here for a little while."

"Are you…will he be…." He paused. In defeated tones he said, "He was a friend of mine."

"Yes." The Kaiser glanced at the prone form, the ruin of the child Daisuke remembered. "Goodbye, Daisuke."

With a ringing of muffled bells the world opened around them, whiteness flooding in, swallowing the leaves and mist and the sound of water. Swallowing Ken, the Kaiser, obliterating all. It had never been. No. It was not real.

He stood on a beach stretching down to meet the foaming sea. The warm and gentle water lapped quietly at the thousand of billions of grains of sand, drawing them out, pushing them back. The beach was wearing away, gradually, over time. Had it existed before the advent of human technology? Before the dawn of mankind? When the first furry mammals ran squeaking from the shadows of monstrous reptiles, had it already been old? The ocean, the land, the place where they met?

"_…whose blue came down in the dead men's eyes…_" Daisuke murmured, beneath the noise of the sea. Overhead the sky had settled into a cool twilight, and the first stars were just visible.

When he saw a pale form drifting in the waves some distance from the shore, he didn't even stop to think, but cast off his shoes and waded into the shallows. He reached Takeru and, hooking him with an arm around the chest, hauled him back to the shallows, then dragged him up the spar.

The man was unconscious, skin cold, lips blue. Daisuke did the only thing possible under the circumstances, holding nose and mouth and blowing air into his lungs, compressing his chest until water spurted from his mouth and he rolled over on his side, coughing and retching.

He didn't turn to face Daisuke again and remained lying where he was, even when the tide turned and began to flow gently over his sodden shoes. Daisuke went some way away and sat down in the sand, knees up and finger interlaced over top.

When the gate opened and Miyako and Yamato stepped through, he offered them a small, tired smile, and helped Yamato carry his brother back into the real world.

* * *

_A/N: But wait, there's more!_

_I'm still working on the last chapter. I'm afraid it's going to be a bit longish._


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